The Ensemble of The Big Gay Jamboree (Photo: Matthew Murphy)

The Big Gay Jamboree

By Fern Siegel

Those who grew up on classic musicals will appreciate their send-up in The Big Gay Jamboree, now off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theater.

Marla Mindelle, the show's star and co-creator, gives an LGBTQ+ sensibility to the traditional musical, which spoofs everything from Oklahoma! to The Sound of Music, with a tribute to The Wizard of Oz thrown in for good measure. This is Mindelle's first musical with an original score. She won the Obie for Titanique.

Mindelle plays a failed actress trapped inside an old-style musical at an off-Broadway theater. The show opens with Stacey (Mindelle) hung over and stunned to discover she's been transported to 1945 Bare Back, Idaho. Everyone seems suspiciously wholesome in this American small town. But the subtext is both gayer, feminist — and darker.

Armed only with her wits, a BFA in musical theater, and confusions about a distant boyfriend (Alex Moffat), Stacey must escape a locale riddled with conformity. She enlists the help of the town's Black music director (Paris Nix), tired of singing gospel numbers; a young woman with a healthy sexual appetite roundly condemned for her passions (Natalie Walker in a show-stopping number); and a closeted gay woodsman (Constantine Rousouli).

The fun is finding the gay sensibility in Bare Back, as well as liberating its women from the kind of oppressive sexism found in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

In fact, Big Gay Jamboree is both an acknowledgement of the gayer elements of famous musicals and the humor in injecting it into a traditional template. Yet, the over-the-top show casts a wide satiric eye: it mocks younger millennials and their vocabulary — Werk, Twerk, Shade, Yas and Prep — and provides comic shoutouts to "Real Housewives" and Jennifer Lopez. It even manages to zing Broadway's rotating stage, a noted feature of Les Miserables.

As co-book writer, Jonathan Parks-Ramage told The New York Times: "We started writing it around the time of the Trump election. The culture was backsliding, and we wanted to do something that took place in a Golden Age musical, but sent it up. Our love language is trolling, so we decided to troll musical theater in this meta way that was also a love letter."

 

Natalie Walker performs a sassy number. (Photo: Matthew Murphy)

 

Jamboree nicely zings stereotypes, even as it occasionally perpetuates them. Sexual behavior is ripe for parody, but there are moments when the envelope is pushed a bit far.

Like her theatrical double, Mindelle has a BFA in musical theater and joined the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific, followed by roles in Sister Act and Cinderella. In Jamboree, her character manages to mock many musical tropes, the requisite pining lover, the odd moments of bursting into song with manic energy, but with a wink and a nod to a knowing audience.

Mindelle co-wrote the music and lyrics with Philip Drennen and even got Margot Robbie ("Barbie") to produce, via LuckyChap Entertainment. The show boasts strong production values in sets, courtesy of dots, costumes by Sarah Cubbage, colorful lighting by Brian Tovar and lively choreography-direction by Connor Gallagher. The projection design by Aaron Rhyne is especially good.

As its title suggests, The Big Gay Jamboree is a lively show, thanks to a strong ensemble and zippy tunes. Judicious editing would enhance pacing and narrative, but for crazy, campy fun, it delivers.

 

The Big Gay Jamboree

Orpheum Theater, 126 2^nd Ave.

Running time: 100 minutes, no intermission

Through Jan. 19, 2025