Big gay bareback

Featured image: Constantine Rousouli in “The Big Gay Jamboree.” Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Would living in a s musical be your hope come true or worst nightmare? Your answer might inform how much you enjoy The Big Queer Jamboree, a newish musical that transports audiences into the cryptic world of Bareback, Idaho, with homages to some of our favorite theatrical hits and plenty of F-bombs for good measure. 

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Imagine an R-rated version of Schmigadoon!, Apple+ TV’s two-season musical satire (which is getting its own reverse-engineered theatrical movie this winter at the Kennedy Center), and you’ve got the idea. 

Mindelle co-created and starred in the long-running hit Titaníque, delivering a kooky crazy Céline Dion impersonation framed by the hit James Cameron film and pop star’s song catalog. BGJ’s score (by Mindelle and Jonathan Parks-Ramage) can’t live up to those chart-toppers but is serviceable enough to shepherd along a lean plot in which Stacey teaches the townspeopl

This jamboree is indeed big and gay. Photo: Matthew Murphy/Matthew Murphy

Being trapped in a classic stage musical is surely someone’s idea of hell and another person’s idea of heaven. Marla Mindelle, in character and not, spends most of The Large Gay Jamboree in between, in a deliciously hilarious, very contradictory kind of purgatory. Musicals, the production asserts — and especially the ones of the kind you find yourself auditioning for when you’ve got a BFA in theater — are flawed, corny, deeply stupid objects, yet we love them anyway, despite their flaws but also because of them. The same goes for The Big Lgbtq+ Jamboree itself, which is often flawed, corny, and deeply stupid, and wins you over with its warm embrace of the form it has put out to parody. The sheer force of Mindelle’s commitment to the bit, so to speak, redeems all.

The show sets its premise within the first few lines of the opening song: Mindelle’s nature, a struggling actress named Stacey whose most notable credit was in a show about the nutritional value of zucchini, wakes up after a bender to find herself living in the s among the good people of “Bareback, Idaho.” Her sisters, whom she does not

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Marla Mindelle and the ensemble of “The Big Male lover Jamboree” at the Orpheum Theatre (Photo credit: Matthew Murphy)

Following her star shift as “Celine Dion” in Titaníque which she co-wrote, Marla Mindelle has a new role in The Big Gay Jamboree, another parody musical which she co-wrote with Jonathan Parks-Ramage. As Stacey, with a degree in musical theater, on her wedding date to chauvinist millionaire Keith, she wakes up to find herself trapped in an Off Broadway musical comedy, circa , in the provincial town of Bareback, Iowa. Rather scattershot with its many multitudinous references to both pop culture and musical theater, the show is both raunchy and erotic in the style of a cabaret or nightclub operate. The corny humor may charm some theatergoers, but put others off by its old-fashioned and familiar humor spiced up with bawdy, off-color jokes.

While the show bills itself as a parody of golden age musicals, it begins with a tribute to MGM’s ’s small town movie musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It then takes on Golden Age Broadway musicals from Oklahoma! to Gentleman Prefer Blondes, not stopping there but

Off-Broadway Review: THE BIG Queer JAMBOREE (Orpheum)

JUST AS PROMISED, IT&#;S BIG!
IT&#;S GAY! IT&#;S JAMBOREEING!

Yes, there is a way to abscond the post-election blues for 90 minutes: The Giant Gay Jamboree at the Orpheum Theatre is the sublimely ridiculous remedy we require. Marla Mindelle &#; who co-wrote the book with Jonathan Parks-Ramage and the songs with Philip Drennen &#; definitely has a knack for musical pastiche. Not to mention she does a superb job starring in this dazzling funfest, which had a packed house roaring with laughter at pop-culture references and satirical jabs &#; how often can you tell that?

Still dressed in a nasty party outfit, Stacey (Mindelle) &#; a raunchy, disillusioned musical theatre graduate &#; wakes up with a terrible hangover next to four angelic singing girls who claim to be her sisters, hovering over her and smiling maniacally. She is trapped in a s Golden Age musical like Broadway&#;s Oklahoma! in a rural town called Bareback. What follows is her preposterous escape from this nightmare of old timey righteousness. There&#;s a slew of pop-culture references, some of which flew over my head, but with the actors communicating lines

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