Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

A recent visit to The Looking Glass Theater on a cold winter evening to see "Plan B The Musical," what producer Dana Everitt of NOMADS promises to be “professional quality theatre…challenging, entertaining, and thought-provoking material for audiences in the wider New York theatre world,” involved a climb down the rickety, dimly lit staircase that hid in the shadows of 422 W. 57th street and a trip down an ever-narrowing hallway to a drafty black-box theatre of about 40 seats.

The band is warming up on a balcony built above the stage, left bare save for two desks, a few random scientific instruments, and a smattering of glow sticks. As the overture begins, a young curly-haired actor enters in a lab coat and paces along a long wall filled with equations. We learn that he is Johnny: an idealistic, horny, and rather stupid scientist played by actor Bray Plofsky. Johnny is attempting to create what he dubs in the opening number is “The Perfect Woman.” What is the perfect woman“ Isabel: a rather stunning, dancing and singing robot played by Gloria Makino. But Johnny has a problem. Isabel is her “hadrons." (Yes, as pointed out in the show, switch the "d" and the "r" and what do you know?) Without hadrons, Isabel can’t function. To create the necessary hadrons, Johnny solicits the help of his angsty, rather butch female coworker, Julia, played by Haley Greenstein. Julia stalks on stage donning combat boots and a blue jumpsuit to sing, “Experiment With Me.” In this tantric ballad, composer/lyricists Rebecca Greenstein and Daniel Mitura pay homage to quintessential villainess numbers like "Lola" in "Damn Yankees": Julia dances a striptease up a ladder, straddles a desk, ruffles Johnny’s hair, and vows to foil his plans to complete Isabel.

It is at this point that we know we’re in satirical-world. The musical is following the traditional form: leading man wants to love the perfect woman, ugly Betty Sidekick gets jealous, attempts to woo him for her own, and so on and so forth. It is here, however, that the absurdity is perhaps taken too far. Julia sings “Fucktard,” a song that inevitably goes nowhere but to point out that men are stupid. There is no journey, no message, no revelation; cursing begins to overwhelm the script for cheap laughs. Furthermore, the actors fail to portray any depth or humanity in expression, but rather resort to one-liners in a style that is altogether too familiar: that of bad community theatre.

Jack, played as a mentally ill older scientist, falls in love with Isabel and vows to steal her for himself in “I love The Way You Smell Like a New Computer.” Johnny and Julia, meanwhile, have a breakthrough and successfully insert the hadrons into Isabel, who has recorded Julia’s death threat and plays it for Johnny just in time for rescue. Johnny is at first shocked, but ultimately realizes that he is, in fact, in love with Julia because “a real woman is not perfect.” Isabel and Jack also confess their love and dance off to the tune of a Cole Porter rip-off in “Mary Todd’s Waltz/Plan B,” complete with an ensemble kick line and jazz hands all the way to blackout.

While all the basic plot structures are in place and the composition is decent, the script and lyrics both fail to be interesting. Furthermore, the cast fails to deliver a production of any entertainment value. The false, inhuman choices and cheap one-liners are so disappointing that it's hard to get involved in the story. Ultimately, "Plan B" becomes a train wreck, attempting to poke fun at the musical-theatre genre in a fantastical setting, but failing in its production value.