The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)

The Musical of Musicals
(The Musical!)
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Music	Eric Rockwell
Lyrics	Joanne Bogart
Book	Joanne Bogart Eric Rockwell
Productions	2003 off-Broadway 2005 off-Broadway 2006 London

The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!) is a musical by Joanne Bogart and Eric Rockwell. It is structured into five acts, each of which is a short musical parodying (and paying homage to) the style of an American or British musical theatre composer or composer/lyricist team, all dealing with roughly the same classic melodrama plot: "I can't pay the rent!"

The musical premiered off-Broadway in 2003 at the York Theatre. It again played off-Broadway in 2005 at the Dodger Stages V with the same cast. It also had a production on London's West End, in Australia (Canberra - 2009 and Feb 2010) as well as numerous productions in U.S. regional theatres and in Canada.

Each musical features four players who reprise similar archetypal melodrama roles in each.

Corn! is set in the style of the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein, featuring parodies of and references to The King and I, The Sound of Music, Carousel, Cinderella, Flower Drum Song, Oklahoma!, and South Pacific. In Kansas in August, Jitter threatens that June will have to marry him if she can't pay the rent; Big Willy is torn between his desire to marry her himself and his desire for the freedom of his carnival-barker lifestyle, and Mother Abby advises her to "follow her dream", leading to a lengthy dream ballet and a happy ending.

A Little Complex is based upon the musicals of Stephen Sondheim (Into the Woods, Company, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George, et al.). In a New York apartment complex full of neurotics, Jitter is a mad artist/landlord who plots to murder his tenants, including bird-obsessed, indecisive Jeune, deep-thinking composer Billy and pessimistic alcoholic Abby, for throwing his artwork out with the trash. After many overly-complex lyrics and dissonant music, he does.

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