Musical of Musicals (The Musical)

Yes, this is some classy show.
Table (6) and row seating.
BYO drinks, nibbles and glasses.

This is a show, not simply for fans of musicals, but those who chuckle at a quotation and shriek at a paraphrase. In five sketches, a simple plot ("I can't pay the rent"; "You must pay the rent"; "I'll pay the rent") is dramatized in a patchwork of snippets from the shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerry Herman, Kander and Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, with mood and milieu suited to the songwriter.

Sondheim's landlord is a frustrated artist who makes throat-slashing gestures with a palette knife; Herman's an easy-going type who forgets about the rent when he discovers mascara. Then there is the story of two lovers in a through-sung Lloyd Webber show lamenting, "We never talk anymore."
In the story someone called Bill, Big Willy or (think Cabaret) Villy, saves the heroine from a demanding landlord called Jutter, Jitter or (think Oklahoma!) Jidder. On slithers Phantom Jitter in his porcelain half-mask promising to forgive the girl's rent arrears if she will sing songs that "sound a weeny like something by Puccini". In stalks the same actor's Jitter, Sweeney Todd-style, to scowl, promise murder and tell us that "hemlock is easy but too Socratesy".

In between, you will recognise references to Evita and Chicago, Aspects of Love and The Sound of Music, Starlight Express and the dream-sequence in Oklahoma! — or will you?

Tickets at Paperbark Merchants, York St, (opposite library) Albany or online.