“Complete Hollywood (abridged)” and “The Bible: The Complete Word of God”

Written by ensemble

Showing: Royal George Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted St., through Dec. 2

Tickets: $43-$48

Contact: (312) 988-9000 or (312) 902-1500

By Lawrence Bommer

CFP theater editor

It’s hard to condense, let alone accelerate, a cultural classic without mocking its material. (Likewise, speed up a film of any human activity and it looks ridiculous, especially sex.) That’s the dangerous but comic premise behind Reduced Shakespeare Company’s complete Shakespeare canon. Its “less-is-funny” formula also fits American history, Hollywood cinema and the Bible. The last two, now served up at the Royal George Theatre, prove easy, deserving targets for Reduced’s reductio ad absurdum.

Running in rep with “Complete Hollywood,” the 140-minute “The Bible: The Complete Word of God” employs three zanies, armed with witty props and rapid costumes, to send up one testament per frantic act. Starting with the “In the Beginning Blues,” their travesty of “the greatest story ever accepted as fact” reprises the Biblical “begats” through cheat sheets thrown at the audience, reveals how the building of the Tower of Babel had no effect on gay sex, and exposes Moses’ “other” commandments (like “Thou shalt not elect an intellectual inferior as president”). There’s also a quiz show to identify the most miserable martyrs in the Old Testament. (Job, however, gets his own joke later.)

The New Testament wanes less hilarious—and not just because Noah’s Flood is belatedly told with audience members doubling as animal couples. In a clever tour-de-trio, Jesus’ miracles are equated to juggling and magic but, presumably accommodating the believers, the threesome all but ignore the Passion and Resurrection, preferring to sum it up through the Easter Bunny. It’s safer to end matters with a vaudeville-sharp tribute to Armageddon.

Skewering our self-mythologizing Tinsel Town, the scattershot “Complete Hollywood (abridged)” is less amusing. Here no stopwatch scenes build on rushed zaniness in what is almost a frat show for film buffs. The madcap trio (three of the nine rotating actors for both shows) deftly spoof “the Industry” by exposing, with appropriate morphings, its penchant for recycling formulae (“Every new movie combines 2 old ones”), product placement, aversion to facts in films, giving Oscars to anyone playing retarded saints, placing action over content, pursuing predictable plot strategies (“coming of age,” “a Jesus-like ‘savior’ story” or “fish out of water” complications), and employing beautiful and disposable young stars.

In the second act, with help from audience extras, the jesters employ these rules to improvise a movie, here a strange Western-style spin-off. The details—fun with credits, aping a romantic musical montage, traffic control for crowd scenes, closeups versus pan shots—proved better than the destination. Maybe, because La-La-Land is its own best joke, this never quite takes off.

“Altar Boyz”

Written by Gary Adler, Michael Patrick Walker and Kevin Del Aguila

Showing: Drury Lane Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut St., through Jan. 6.

Tickets: $45-$55

Contact: (312) 642-2000; www.altarboyzchicago.com

By Web Behrens

Contributing writer

A musical comedy about a boy band doesn’t sound like an especially fresh idea. I mean, does anybody really need to see another show about a group of young vocalists? From “Dreamgirls” to “Forever Plaid,” hasn’t this musical sub-genre been exhausted?

The answer: Of course not. All you have to do is give it a twist. And believe it or not, “Altar Boyz”—yes, with a “Z,” just like Liza—hits a homerun. Not to be confused with the other Boys who just came to town (“Jersey Boys,” a jukebox musical about the Four Seasons), this local production of an off-Broadway smash hit (complete with added Chicago references) spoofs prefab boy bands. Sure, that’s not hard—from Menudo to ‘N Sync, these groups typically spoof themselves without even trying—but the show tweaks the idea by also sending up Christian pop. Yes, the Altar Boyz are a fictional quintet of god-rockers on the verge of bigger stardom, here to entertain their squealing-teen fan base while saving everyone’s souls to boot.

From their opening number, it’s clear that this show is going to have a good time poking fun at the characters, named Matthew, Mark, Luke…plus Juan (the token Latino) and Abraham (the token Jew). Of course, the members also include the closeted gay guy and the guy struggling with addic—er, exhaustion problems. If it all sounds a bit obvious, well, it probably is. The joy comes from how hilariously the show delivers on its simple set-up.

Composers Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, along with librettist Kevin Del Aguila, have fashioned 90 intermission-less minutes of really funny material. The striking, biting humor feels at times like a “Simpsons” musical—right down to the Soul Sensor DX-12, a machine that tells the boys how many audience members need salvation. Many of the funniest bits get delivered through Christopher Gattelli’s choreography. Right-wingers would cringe, but the rest of us can crack up for a quick dance move that evokes the crucifixion, or when the first four Boyz make the sign of the cross, while Abraham does a six-point Star of David move.

Like Gattelli, director Stafford Arima comes from the original show’s New York creative team; Arima knows that the key to the material is to play it straight. His five-member cast, likeable to a man, manages to ride the fine line between satire and sacrilege. Devin DeSantis, Tyler McGee, Nick Verina and Adam Zelasko are all very talented performers. Ditto for understudy Joey Haro, who performed the role of Mark in the performance seen for this review. (He might be a bit young—but then again, Mark’s a twink.) Somehow, even when the humor veers dangerously into the overly broad territory (“La Vida Eternal”), the cast never flies off the rails.

It doesn’t hurt, natch, that the Boyz are all sexy. Everybody loves some eye candy, and the women in the audience—especially the teen girls—were so invested in show, you could hear them sympathizing with Juan when he receives some bad news and rooting for Mark when it seems like he’ll reveal his crush on Matthew. But beyond the sexy faces and athletic choreography, there are plenty of wink-wink jokes for a gay crowd. Gattelli’s choreography when the Boyz sing “Rhythm in Me” (which includes the double-entendre lyric, “God put it in me”) is the funniest, gayest thing since the Village People delivered “YMCA” to mainstream culture. And some of it’s even more subtle that that, like Mark’s line about being courted by David Geffen. For a solo contract, of course.

To paraphrase altar-homeboy Luke: This show is Mary Magdalicious.

“Songs for a New World”

Written by Jason Robert Brown

Showing: BoHo Theatre at Heartland Studio, 7016 N. Glenwood Ave., through Nov. 11.

Tickets: $20-$22

Contact: (773) 791-2393; www.bohotheatre.com

By Web Behrens

Contributing writer

Only diehard theater fans might have heard of “Songs for a New World.” But if you’ve been to a cabaret act or two in the past decade, you’ve surely heard its best-known song, “Stars and the Moon.” It’s composer Jason Robert Brown’s “Send in the Clowns” or “Meadowlark”—a much-beloved, oft-recorded new standard for female vocalists. Here, in Bohemian Theatre Ensemble’s impressive production, the wistful song is brought to full-throated life by the talented Alanda Coon, a mainstay of the Chicago cabaret scene. She knows how to act the hell out of a song and, more importantly, has the good sense not to oversell anything in this tiny black-box theater in Rogers Park.

That might be reason enough to see this fascinating if unformed work, but it’s not the only reason: There are three other pros singing their hearts out on this stage—Jayson Brooks, Jess Godwin and Michael Arthur—and one crackerjack musical director, Andra Velis Simon, smoking up the keyboard. (The orchestrations have been reduced to just piano and percussion, and you’d never know it wasn’t always that simple.)

This isn’t a full-fledged musical but pastiche song-cycle, which makes it ideal for a small company to perform in a small space. (Composed in 1995, it’s an early work from Brown, who went on to win a Tony for “Parade,” and then to develop his other modern-day chamber musical, the much more cohesive “The Last Five Years.”) Even without a book, there’s a theme, sung repeatedly by the quartet: “It’s about one moment”—in other words, about pivotal decisions in a person’s life. Brown takes his title literally, as the first song following the opening sequences immediately ratchets the emotional intensity up to 10, by placing us all “On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1492.”

Not all the songs represent quite so momentous an event. There’s a New York socialite contemplating suicide in the face of her husband’s infidelity; a college student considering marriage as his father’s life crumbles; an up-and-coming basketball player high on his talent and the verge of fortune. Still, Brown’s choice to mix famous figures with everyday folk is odd, never more jarringly so than with “Surabaya-Santa,” sung by the fictional Mrs. Claus to her absentee hubby. (Which isn’t to say the song’s not a clear crowd pleaser.)

But you couldn’t ask for more passionate musical performances. Arthur, Brooks, Coon and Godwin are a delight that trump any shortcomings in the material, and BoHo Theatre offers a first-rate opportunity to hear these songs from a then-rookie talent fully realized.