Written by Scott Brown and Anthony King
Directed by Alex Timbers
Starring Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells
James Earl Jones Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
It has sometimes happened in my reviewing career that a revival comes along and I really don’t need to write an entirely fresh review, because what I’ve written before still holds. The return of Gutenberg! The Musical! is just such an occasion. What I have done (per usual) is update this repurposing to reflect the 2023 particulars; but I’ve also retained the 2007 (and earlier) theatrical references, because they actually allow me (and you) a broader context. So, back and forth in the time machine. Here goes:
With regard to some ideas, some concepts, it really-truly is just a matter of timing; coming along at the right moment, getting the right critics, tapping the desired gestalt sensibility and generally getting lucky. For as merry an evening as Gutenberg! The Musical! is for many, it was preceded by other self-referential musicals about musicals, such as Smith (about a stodgy botanist trapped in a musical, this one more a direct antecedent of The Drowsy Chaperone) and A Backers’ Audition (the title tells it) and The Big Bang.
Perhaps The Big Bang especially. (I’m sidestepping [title of show] and Musical of Musicals—The Musical only because their approaches don’t have the hovering shadow of previous evenings that did pretty much the same thing, pretty much as well; though I absolutely do include them in the pantheon of musicals about musicals that emerged at the right time but were no better than the other named shows that were met with less critical approval.)
In order to make sense of that, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to ask you to read another review about another show before you read this one. I was so taken with The Big Bang that I left the review online in my “Gone But Not to Be Forgotten” archive. Here’s the link. Click and read, then hit your back button and return to this page; I’ll still be here. Ready? Go.
Okay? Got the idea? Now here’s what Gutenberg is about.
We’re at a “staged reading” in a rented Broadway theatre (up from the rented rehearsal room of the original, off-Broadway iteration). The authors, Bud (Josh Gad) and Doug (Andrew Rannells), who have spent pretty much everything they have on the one-night rental—and their trio of musicians—are two naïve dweebs who are hopelessly unhip musical theatre fanboys; and they have written this epic musical following all the rules and principles of the form—at least as dimly extrapolated by them from what they’ve seen onstage and what they’ve read in bios and craft books. Thinking a historical figure and milieu will give their musical a sense of importance, they’ve chosen to tell the true story—albeit by their own admission wildly fictionalized—of the inventor of the printing press. Using multiple baseball caps with character names stenciled on to help delineate multiple characters, they play all the parts themselves, male and female. The purpose of this staged reading is to interest a commercial producer who will take the show to full Broadway production.
Their conspicuously over-scripted, conspicuously faux-impromptu “banter” includes sidebars along the way to point out all the required elements they’ve hit, such as “the I Want song” and the opening number that sets the place, and even an obligatory “charm song” (demonstrated and described as a respite from the action that has nothing to do with anything in which nothing really happens). So they alternately explain to us what they’ve done, summarize the story and sing the score’s high[sic]lights, which are of course parodies of horrifically misguided songs. (There’s a weird gray area here, because though the authors—that is, the real life American authors, Scott Brown and Anthony King, who originally also played the parts when the show debuted in England, and later at the NYMF—are sharp enough to understand the conventions being lampooned, and lampoon them intelligently, it’s hard to know if they’re good enough to write genuinely good songs [there’s no shred of originality in the musical vocabulary, for example]; thus real life and parody intersect somewhat. Whereas in The Big Bang, there was a much cannier use of genre and pastiche because the authors were working from a more versatile, seasoned palate.)
Which is not to say that Gutenberg! isn’t a hoot—for most. I found it mild and obvious (perhaps because as a musical theatre teacher, and many years before becoming one as a fellow student, I’ve met too many authentic Buds and Dougs to find them all that amusing), but the night I attended, the audience was roaring throughout, at the performers (who miraculously manage to stretch out their one-joke characters for two acts) and director Alex Timbers’ resourceful how-much-can-I-do-with-absolutely-nothing staging. And as I stated in that other review, comedy is the most democratic form of entertainment there is. If they laugh, it works. If they don’t, it doesn’t.
They laugh.
It works.
But as I’ve written—it has worked before. Where most musicals are concerned—most—quality will out; critical consensus rarely weighs against a well-constructed book show that fires on the right cylinders, and audiences will tend to find it; however, novelty items like The Big Bang and Gutenberg are another matter altogether. Whether or not they create the buzz they (we hope) deserve used to be solely all about the mood and taste of the Times guy (and others) at the press performances. Put another way: they used to depend solely upon the kindness of stringers.
But in recent years, social media is much more a part of the equation. And there’s the fond memory of Gad and Rannells as the original leads in The Book of Mormon; their reuniting has event frisson, like Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick returning to The Producers.
Once audiences stop responding to the inside jokes (and at least historically there’s usually a point when they do), the closing notice is not that far behind.
Then again, maybe there’s a reason why this revival of Gutenberg is here for a strictly limited run. January 28 may just be the sell-by date…