Well, the mainstream Broadway and off-Broadway venues may not be satisfying my craving for interesting new musicals, so thank goodness for kooky off-kilter theatres like the Kraine (home to "Hostage Song"), the Zipper Factory ("Inner Voices"), and now Ars Nova which is now home to "Jollyship The Whiz-Bang: A Pirate Puppet Rock Odyssey." Come to think of it, Ars Nova - which always seemed more like a venue for concerts than for theatre - has really been on a winning streak in my book, having also presented the extremely entertaining "Dixie's Tupperware Party" and "At Least It's Pink," as well as being a co-producer of "Form Up Here" (at MTC). I suppose I now should be kicking myself for not seeing "Boom" when it was there, because I probably would have liked it. Ah well. ANYWAY, I wasn't really sure whether I really wanted to see "Jollyship Whiz-Bang" - I listened to some of the music tracks on their myspace page, and sort of got the impression this wasn't going to be the show for me. But the allure of a pirate, puppet, rock musical was just too strong, and so I booked a ticket anyway. I can certainly understand that this show won't be to everyone's taste, but I have an extremely strange sense of humor, and this show was definitely right up my alley. I was trying to think of something to compare the show to, but I haven't been able to think of any one show that's similar - it has the rock band performs a musical sensibility of "Striking 12" (the Groovelily "Little Matchgirl" musical), the wacky humor of "The Forbidden Zone" (the bizarre Oingo Boingo movie musical, one of my favorite guilty pleasures), and the nautical nonsense of "Spongebob Squarepants." As far as the puppets go, they're more in the vein of something like Punch & Judy (though with mouths that open and close) than Sesame Street/Avenue Q. The story is basically that the completely insane Captain of Jollyship The Whiz-Bang (who reminded me a bit of the Flying Dutchman on "Spongebob") decides he is going to go find Party Island (where the booze is free, the girls are half price, and there are mountains of salt water taffy), and of course since no one actually knows where this place is, the journey doesn't go so well. There's of course many more silly details and goofy subplots, but that's the general idea. The music can probably best be described as loud. Some of the songs are sung by the puppets, but it seemed like more often the story would go aside and the band would just sing a song that I think was related to the story... it was sort of hard to tell because I had trouble understanding the lyrics. I, who know nothing about rock music, would found myself thinking it sounded like indie-rock, but I'm not sure why that term comes to mind because to be perfectly honest I have no idea what indie-rock is. But in the world in my head it sounds like the right term. I can't say there were really any melodies to be gleaned from the first hearing. But there was something sort of satisfying about earsplitting music that should probably one would probably be inclined to nod ones head rather than tap one's toes to, and those lyrics that I did make out were quite amusing. The whole thing runs something like two hours (including intermission), and I will say that I was a bit afraid that a show like this stretched out for so long might be a little too much of a good thing, and it might overstay its welcome. And indeed the second act did lag a little, though it did eventually recover and (no pun intended) smoothly sail to the end. This is really just a bizarre, scrappy little musical that fits perfectly into Ars Nova. I can't really imagine this working quite as well in a more formal venue - it's roughness was definitely part of the appeal... sort like that low-budget paper cut-out style of animation that "South Park" uses to such good effect.
There's really just something so inherently wonderful about the very idea of a puppet-pirate-rock musical. I mean, I like pirates, I like puppets, and I like (some) rock musicals. So how could they go wrong? Well... yes, there were many ways. So the fact that the show is just so damn entertaining made be a very happy boy.
