Big Bang for Your Yuks

Ken Clement & Gary Marachek 

We finally made it out to the Gables to catch the Actors’ Playhouse summer yuk-fest The Big Band and it’s a riot. The show, which drew great reviews and has been playing to packed houses, has been extended through the end of the month and it’s easy to see why. The show by Boyd Graham (Book & Lyrics) and Jed Feuer (Music) has a premise that affords almost illimitable opportunity for zany hilarity. The action plays out against the backdrop of Scenic Designer Gene Seyffer’s lavishly-appointed set detailing a sumptuous Manhattan apartment as two Broadway producer wannabes (Gary Marachek and Ken Clement) abetted by a pianist (Music Director David Nagy very Steve Allen-ish in his subtly wry bemusement) proceed to pitch to potential backers (the audience) the most expensive musical ever conceived, budgeted at $83 million, enacting the entire history of the universe over twelve hours (in four three-hour installments) with a cast of 318. With breathless buoyancy and hilarious chutzpah our pitchmen describe their mind-boggling extravaganza: massive kooky production numbers, spectacular stage effects and monumental crowd scenes – while themselves performing excerpts, changing historical characters with madcap zest.

A huge part of the fun comes from seeing how they make ingenious, on-the-run use of scenery items and props from the set itself to fashion amazingly cool and funny approximations of historical costumes as the need for them comes up. Credit Mary Lynne Izzo for a fab job with the clever, inventive costume design/ set decorations. Curtains are torn off for capes, planters and lampshades become headgear, two umbrellas serve as the underpinnings for a Southern belle’s bustle, a mantel clock serves as Napoleon’s signature hat. Many of the “impromptu” costume changes draw considerable laughs in their own right.

Clement is in fine voice and despite a trace of unwonted pensiveness for the over-the-top goofiness of the material at the performance I saw (a slight case of the Sunday matinee blahs, perhaps), he’s effective and often very funny in any number of whackily-conceived and executed turns. Apart from the wondrous merriment and inventiveness of the material, though, it’s the sure-handed comedic brilliance and savvy and unflagging zest of Gary Marachek that makes this show an especial delight. Marchek incorporates his considerable skills as an impressionist to transport Marlon Brando as the Godfather and Sammy Davis, Jr. to ancient Rome, and regales us with hilarious juxtapositions like Queen Nefertiti as a bump-and-grinding Pearl Bailey and Frank Sinatra as Attila the Hun (“I burn down all their crops/ Just so I can bust their chops.”) His “Patty O’Gratin” singing to his last potato is such that you’ll never be able to think about the Irish Potato Famine again without giggling.

Feuer’s music is slyly apropos in a straight-ahead Broadway show tune mode that won’t leave you humming but works for virtually every bit. It’s the unfailing comedic inventiveness of Graham’s book and lyrics, though, that really sets the table for this laugh feast. Add a topnotch staging such as this by Actors’ Playhouse artistic director David Arisco and you have a winner on just about all counts. The Big Bang is a blast.