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Sunday, June 01, 2014

Springtime for Ayn Rand

Frank Pasquale directed me to this review of a new musical in which Ayn Rand and the Village People promisingly collide:
Once in a blue moon comes a show so laughably bad, it’s almost enjoyable -- almost... Loosely based on Ayn Rand’s 1938 sci-fi novella “Anthem,” this inept musical stars Randy Jones (the original cowboy from Village People) and has been staged like... “Starlight Express...” Set in a totalitarian future that looks just like a 1980s music video, the show follows the political awakening of hunky Prometheus (Jason Gotay) as he rejects a society that proclaims “the folly of independent thought” -- a typical Randian line woodenly delivered by Jones’ cartoonish Tiberius, in full silent-movie-villain mode... but director Rachel Klein and her team... have no satirical edge, and the message appears to be taken seriously. Or as seriously as it can be in a show loaded with silver lamé. Laughs abound, but they’re unintentional. A muscular Executioner in leather hot pants (Jamyl Dobson) emotes “The Palace of Mating” with a porny wacka-wacka guitar riff in the background. In their inadvertently hilarious duet, Prometheus and feisty rebel Athena (Ashley Kate Adams) warble “On the precipice of danger/I stand before a stranger/And I feel born anew/Stimulated past all rationality/How can I face reality.” And so it goes for almost 2½ punishing hours...
God, I'm so turned on right now. In the spirit of, now tell us what you really feel about the incomparable La Rand you may enjoy Behind the Music: Atlas Shrugged and Implausible Character, Vacuous Foundations.

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