The Culture Club

By rights, Dylan MarcAurele’s raunchy musical spoof of HBO's skate-away success about gay hockey players should not be nearly as funny as it is. But as directed by Alan Kliffer, this scrappy show is an unexpected delight in the irreverent camp tradition of Silence! The Musical! and the original Asylum production of Titanique. Writer-composer MarcAurele rolls out a seemingly inexhaustible series of double entendres, and the high-spirited cast of five actors—led by grade-A cuties Jimin Moon and Jay Armstrong Johnson as the central couple—score with nearly every shot they take. Most of the show’s comedy stems from the tonal clash between the steamy subject matter and the earnestness of traditional musical theater, and it wouldn’t work if the cast (which also includes Ryann Redmond, Ryan Duncan and Cherry Torres) weren’t experts at the latter. It’s knowingly silly but also, sneakily, just a little sexy, too. It knows how to wink both ways at once. Read the full review. 

New York audiences have watched Sophia Anne Caruso grow up onstage, from the Girls of Lazarus and Blackbird to the creepy teens in Beetlejuice and The Grey House. Now she steps into her leading-lady era in a musical adapted from Moyoco Anno's biographical manga about the racy early years of a woman named Colette during the Belle Époque. The score is by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening)—who died unexpectedly last month—and the book is by Leah Nanako Winkler. Broadway director-choreographer Rob Ashford (Promises, Promises) steers the premiere production, whose quite large cast also includes Cory Jeacoma, Nkeki Obi-Melekwe, Marc delaCruz and Jenny Powers.