On November 29th, 2006 The New York Post published a photograph of Naughties pop culture icons Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton sitting in the front of a car together in Beverly Hills. “Bimbo Summit”, the first edition headline sneered, which was later revised to “3 Bimbos of the Apocalypse” for the tabloid’s evening edition. The snarky and demeaning subheading—”No Clue, No Cares, No Underwear: Meet The Party Posse Of The Year”—sums up the tone of the accompanying article.
Post writer Maureen Callahan went on to tear into what she referred to as “the unholy alliance”, mocking their “collective brain power”, musing that trying “to guess what their conversations sound like is enough to make anyone’s head explode”, and accusing Spears of being a bad parent. Posting about the photograph on Instagram last year, Hilton had a more positive spin, describing it as “instantly iconic” and “the moment that defined an era.”
That infamous image was indeed era-defining, as was the way it was framed by The Post. Taking that paparazzi shot as a starting point for their new musical, The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse, proves to be a stroke a genius by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley who wrote the book, with music and lyrics by Breslin and additional music and lyrics by Foley. In the world of the show, there was a fourth forgotten “bimbo” who was cropped out of that photograph. The only clue to who she might have been is a glimpse of her wrist, sporting a name bracelet with the letters C-O-C-O. Cue three terminally-online teenage shut-ins to take it upon themselves to get to the bottom of the mystery of who this fourth woman was and whatever happened to her.
Enthusiastic Gen Z vloggers Earworm (Luke Islam) and Bookworm (Patrick Nathan Falk) co-host a channel examining the ancient relics of Naughties pop culture, but are in danger of outnumbering their viewer count. Their popularity instantly soars when they are unexpectedly joined by Internet sleuth Brainworm (Milly Shapiro), heavily disguised by a filter, who goes by She/Her/Sherlock and dedicates her time to looking for “missing girls”. Despite being “an intersectional feminist”, she admits that “dead white girls are [her] crack”.
It transpires that the missing “bimbo”, Coco (Keri René Fuller), was a failed pop artist who recorded her own music video for her single “Something Out of Nothing”. It is an irresistibly catchy pop confection with a distinctively mid-00s vibe, gorgeously sung by Fuller, that preceptively captures that era’s pre-social media brand of desperation for instant fame and validation. Coco’s unrealized dream was to perform the song on MTV’s TRL.
Riffling through the vaults of PerzHilton.com, the vlogging trio soon come across a denigrating obituary for Coco and a pixelated flip-phone selfie, posted the day before she died, featuring two other figures whom the worms assume are Coco’s mother, Mother! (Sara Gettelfinger), and her stylist (Natalie Walker). The vloggers’ speculation about the selfie leads into one of the standout numbers of the show, “I Literally Die”, envisioning the stylist as the chief suspect in Coco’s unexplained death with an imagined reconstruction. It features a tour-de-force by Walker with some jaw-dropping vocals, including what is described in the script as “apocalyptic vocal fry”. It’s one of several electrifying numbers that make The Last Bimbo a frequently invigorating and refreshingly unpredictable theatrical experience. I’d recommend not knowing anything more about the plot before going in.
Having seen Breslin and Foley’s 2020 play Circle Jerk, a Pulitzer Prize-finalist, I had expected this musical to be smart, spiky, bold, and hilarious—which it is—but I hadn’t expected there to be this much heart, emotional depth and vulnerability in the characters. The entire ensemble cast is on fire, with powerhouse vocals and a raft of delectable dance pop bops with razor sharp lyrics that had me hanging on every word. The writing deftly captures the essence of the celebrity culture lexicon of 2006—”ew”—and today, with some phrases I’d only ever read in YouTube comments that made me ROLF to hear spoken or sung. One of my favourite rhymes, delivered with a touching poignancy, has to be: “Watching her eat those Pringles / I’m starting to feel these tingles!”
It’d be easy to tackle this premise with a similarly judgmental, snarky tone to that of The Post back in 2006, but Breslin and Foley’s point of view is far more nuanced and surprisingly gentle, tender even. Their take is not so much about examining the behaviour of women like Lindsay, Britney, Paris—and Coco—though it does touch on their own manipulation of the press. Instead, it is more about the way they were depicted by the tabloid media and entertainment bloggers, how that coverage was consumed by the public then, and how it is perceived two decades on.
In its own way, Last Bimbo serves as part of our collective reckoning with the way women were treated by a toxic media landscape, where PerezHilton’s poison stylus scribbles over unflattering paparazzi photos was the norm. A reexamination of the Naughties that was spearheaded by documentaries like Samantha Stark’s Framing Britney Spears back in 2021. Another film that would make a nice companion piece to this musical is Zackary Drucker’s 2023 Hulu documentary Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl, which uncovers the story of an anonymous blogger who was infatuated with the heiresses of 2000s New York.
Last Bimbo also taps into the kind of celebrity obsession and conspiracy theory tugging of the #FreeBritney movement that helped lead to her legal emancipation (referenced by Bookworm), and its framing chimes with the current saturation of true crime series. While Breslin and Foley amusingly, and reflectively, contextualize the post-9/11 America that these teenager vloggers were born into and what it means to have spent your entire life online, even before you could consent to it. As Earworm and Bookworm sing, “My dad put my baby picture online the minute after I was born / Ever since, I live my life here where every image is a sign of how the world is in decline”. They are now living out that paradox of wanting to escape the IRL world but still needing to engage with it from behind a screen.
Impeccably directed by Rory Pelsue, with organic feeling choreography by Jack Ferver that often adds to the humour, there is a precision to the execution of the production but not at the expense of its thrillingly daring, raw punk spirit that put me in mind of Rocky Horror. Stephanie Osin Cohen’s set design is simple but impactful and one of the most effective aspects of the show’s staging is the use of light cubes as iPhones which illuminate the performers’ faces as the characters are spellbound by their screens.
This premiere production is scheduled through June 1st, but this show deserves to return for a longer run. I was SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP. AND YES, I KNOW I’M TYPING IN ALL CAPS. Do not sleep on this show.
By James Kleinmann
The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse officially opened on Tuesday May 13th, 2025 and runs in a limited Off-Broadway engagement through June 1st at The Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater (480 West 42nd Street). For performance schedule and to purchase tickets head to TheNewGroup.org.