As the unsinkable Titanique continues its hit New York run, while simultaneously voyaging to Sydney, London, Toronto and Montreal, that show’s award-winning co-creator and original star, Marla Mindelle, delivers another Off-Broadway musical theatre comedy boots the house down triumph with The Big Gay Jamboree at the Orpheum Theatre. With a book by Mindelle and Jonathan Parks-Ramage and music and lyrics by Mindelle and Philip Drennen, the audacious premise sees Stacey (Mindelle) wake up to discover that she is trapped inside a 1940s musical set in the backwater town of Bareback, Idaho. As we meet the town’s inhabitants, we are treated to their unintentionally innuendo-laden Bareback anthem in a lively 40s classical musical theatre style ensemble number.
While Stacey is naturally perplexed by the situation, not to mention that there is a live audience (us) watching her every move, the townsfolk are preoccupied as they busily prepare to put on a “Big Gay Jamboree” in honour of her wedding later that day. Which is news to her. As Stacey attempts to grasp what is going on, she finds herself starting to involuntarily sing her thoughts out loud in contemporary musical theatre style to the equally bewildered and intrigued town’s music director, and its only Black resident, the hunky and charming Clarence (a fantastic Paris Nix). He shares his admiration for her “wonderfully strange” 2024 fashions which he says make her look like “a drunk baby abandoned on the doorstep of a brothel”, before opening up to her about his frustrations that his sole purpose in the town is to sing gospel. All of which leads to a potent gospel style number, “Gospel Song”, beautifully delivered by Nix, with Stacey assuring Clarence that he is serving “main character energy”.
In the world of the show, Stacey finds herself with four maddeningly attentive, more or less interchangeable sisters—even they get confused about who’s who—Cora (Jillian Mueller), Dora (Amanda Lee), Nora (Olivia OPuckett), the lobotomized sibling with rotting teeth and a glass eye, and Flora (Natalie Walker). As the eldest, Flora is still “tragically unmarried” at the ripe old age of 18, but can’t contain her insatiable sex drive. Initially attempting to hide her frequent sexual trysts in the woods with the married men of the town, Flora—giving delectable Marylin Monroe as Lorelei Lee in Gentleman Prefer Blondes vibes—is delighted to learn from Stacey that in the future her sexual freedom would be celebrated. As Stacey encourages her new sister’s BDSM tendencies, Flora embraces her libido and kinkiness with her self-empowering big band style musical number “Kitty Tickle”.
When the townspeople say “gay”, they mean it in the 1940s sense of the word, but when Stacey, who has lived in Hell’s Kitchen and has a gaggle of Fireball-guzzling, leather harness-sporting gay bffs says it, she see means it very much in the 2024 “yaaaas, kween, werk, serve” sense of the word. This leads to a hilarious standout audience singalong number giving serious “Do Re Mi”-meets-Grindr energy, “The GAY-B-Cs”, as Stacey teaches some of the townsfolk the fundamentals of being gay in her present day. All of which goes some way to redressing the fact that in “classic musicals…there are absolutely zero gay characters, but you know that everyone behind the scenes was a boots the house down bottom!’ As Stacey pithily observes.
With The Big Gay Jamboree loosely structured like The Wizard of Oz (with a touch of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village via Schmigadoon!), Stacey takes both Clarence and Flora under her wing, encouraging them to come back to the future with her where they can be free to be themselves. Ignoring the horror stories—and even the lyrics of the town’s anthem—about the certain death that awaits anyone who attempts to leave Bareback, the trio bravely ventures into the forbidden woods in search of the Enchanted Castle. On their travels they encounter the town outcast, Bert (Constantine Rousouli, a co-creator and original star of Titanique) who has a fabulous, showstopping solo dance number celebrating the revelation that in the future he can fully embrace his gayness without having to hide in a shack in the woods and be branded a “big scary monster” as he is Bareback in 1945.
As we learn from a series of inventively staged flashback scenes set in the real world, Stacey was working as a waitress in a Chili’s (though she admits she was mainly doing coke in the bathroom) harbouring dreams of being on Broadway, when she met her multi-millionaire Silicon Valley douchebag fracking-mine-owning boyfriend Keith (a superb turn by SNL star Alex Moffat). He made the cringey move of ordering the jalapeño poppers with a “side order of her phone number”.
Having played Evita in kindergarten, Stacey’s most impressive, well, only acting credit since is originating the role of a singing vegetable in a non-Equity musical that we get a little flavour of, Mr. Zucchini’s Riboflavin Factory. As her relationship with Keith progressed, she allowed her Broadway ambitions, along with the chance of being in a J-Lo musical, to fade replacing them with her ultimate dream of being a Real Housewife, on any franchise apart from Dubai (which she says she just couldn’t get into after watching a couple of episodes).
Months into the relationship, having arranged a trip for her and her gays to Miami, Stacey assumes Keith is about to finally pop the question, a moment she ensures is being live streamed on TikTok. Instead, he ceremoniously presents her with tickets to a Reneé Rapp concert. Is she really in love with this creep? Was he worth putting her ambitions on ice for? Might there be some chemistry between her and Clarence? Will she ever get out of Bareback? You’ll just have to see the show to find out.
The genius of The Big Gay Jamboree is that it manages to pull off with flair, the not inconsiderable feat, of being both a highly successful parody of musical theatre as well as a knowledgeable, loving tribute to it, just as Mindelle achieved with her approach to Céline Dion in Titanique. (In this show, the pop diva who gets respectfully sent up as she’s admiringly referenced for her ability to navigate a tumultuous love life and career, is Jennifer Lopez.) As the show runs the gamut of musical theatre styles, crucially it gives all the pleasure of watching an old-timey musical but with present-day relevance and cheeky humour, and allows us to enjoy the brilliantly crafted contemporary musical theatre songs, while playfully acknowledging that the style itself is “ugly”, “but kinda catchy”.
What also makes this show work so well is the precision with which it is executed, led by the magnificent Mindelle with her outrageously appealing, powerful and versatile vocals and comedy chops to match. The entire cast is first-rate and utterly committed to every dance move they make, note they sing and joke they land. Not a beat is wasted, as the cast takes things seriously enough to make each laugh really hit. With a small live orchestra, the music is full and rich, overseen by music director Adam Laird, with orchestrations by Kris Kukul, and arrangements and music supervision by David Dabbon.
Designed by dots, the continually impressive set largely has the aesthetics of a 40s stage musical, with so many painted flats flying in it made me wonder how there was enough room to store them above the stage. There are some dazzling set changes that feed the humour and contribute to keeping the energy high. While the revolving section of the stage justifies the budget that must have been spent on it every time it gets used. Sarah Cubbage’s vibrant costumes vividly evoke the 40s musical world, with dashes of the present, while also adding to the fun with some great quick-changes.
Director and choreographer Connor Gallagher, who, according to the show’s program made his Broadway debut as a dancing rug (Stacey would be able to relate), brings a natural, in-the-moment feel to his brilliantly fine-tuned calibration of the staging and performances. As with Titanique, there are some genuinely improvised moments involving audience participation, which Mindelle seems in her element in dealing with, but she also manages to make the rest her performance seem equally as off-the-cuff, even in the mostly highly choreographed and vocally demanding sections of the show.
To give some context, I saw this production on November 6th, the evening after the election. Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly in a celebratory mood. So getting thoroughly absorbed in a show and being transported and entertained for 100 minutes was a pretty tall order. This show is a musical comedy miracle tonic that delivers on every front, and had me howling with laughter throughout. Stacey muses at one point about “the power of musical theatre”, that “it may seem stupid—and that’s because it is—but the magic of song and dance and Kristin Chenoweth transcends logic!” Yes, it may seem stupid, but that night I really felt that power and was deeply grateful for it. Mindell and co have created the ultimate Off-Broadway musical theatre comedy. If you like musicals, laughing and gay stuff, do not miss this show. In fact, I’m already planning a return trip to Bareback.
By James Kleinmann
The Big Gay Jamboree officially opened Off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre (126 Second Ave.) on September 30th, 2024 and is running until December 15th, 2024. For more details and to purchase tickets head to BigGayJamboreeTheMusical.com.