Is musical comedy dead? The curtain will lift on McCarter's stage this weekend for Triangle's newest show, presenting a stage littered with tombstones and black-shrouded mourners wailing the death of musical comedy. But the ensuing musical review is anything but mournful and somber, proving that if any show is able to send a shock to jumpstart musical comedy back to life, then the Princeton Triangle Club's fall show is the one!
"This Side of Parody" is a musical review that runs the gamut with its witty and amusing skits, ranging from a satirical number about recent "random" airline security searches to the classical "To Be or Not To Be" speech from "Hamlet" — with a little twist, of course! Who would expect anything less from Triangle?
A new and entertaining musical from Triangle each fall is no surprise for Princeton natives or veteran students. The Triangle Club is deeply rooted in Princeton University tradition, performing musicals for the past 112 years. But after all these years, musical comedy has not been beaten to death, as the opening moments of the show jokingly suggest, but instead the Triangle Club revitalizes it every year with original, innovative material and songs.
What makes the Triangle show such a unique performance is that the students write all of the sketches and musical numbers. As a result, the shows are always incredibly up-to-date, often jumping at the chance to ridicule recent scandals and frequently riding the rails of offensiveness. The airplane "random" search skit is just one example of the tongue-in-cheek comedy that Triangle audiences have come to expect — and what keeps them coming back for more.
In addition to making the shows original every year, the students' authorship causes the creative process of the show to be very extensive and the gestation period of the performance to be longer than most other shows.
Writer and performer Jesse Liebman '03 remarked on the thousands of hours that have been put into "This Side of Parody."
"This show is a culmination of ten months of hard work," he said. And the result according to him? "Pure unadulterated silliness."
The histories of the show numbers are illustrative of ongoing creative process. Some songs were written last spring in Triangle writers' workshops, some were written at the recent Writers' Boot Camp just this past August, and one was even written two years ago, but didn't find a spot in the show that year, only coming to life this fall. Regardless of the birth date of a song or a sketch, all go through intensive revisions, sometimes not reaching their final form until the opening night of the show.
The show has a new musical director this year, Steven Silverstein, a professional musical director and composer in New York City. This lengthy creative process of the Triangle show is exactly what he seems to enjoy most about it.
"It's a process of shaping an idea," he explained. "Someone has a concept about a number and you develop it by asking, 'How can we stage this?' 'What do we do to make it work dramatically?' And then you shape the idea and the number by working with the choreographer, the conductor, the director, the actors."
The show's director and choreographer Dan Knechtges noted that the creative process of Triangle yields such great results because of the skilled people involved in every facet of the show. "So many talented people are involved with this show, and if all the positions in a musical are strong, then it's easy for everything to come together — and easier for me to direct," he said.
This is Knechtges' second year of involvement with a Triangle fall show. He worked as choreographer on last year's show, "Absurd to the Wise." He chose to increase his role in the show because, as he said, "I love doing this show — because it's all new work."
Both musical director Silverstein and director Knechtges have an extreme fondness for the opening number of the show, which seems to illustrate the overall creative process characteristic of all Triangle shows.
Silverstein remarked, "It's definitely been the most exciting number in the rehearsal process. It's gone through such a journey."
"The audience is seeing probably the twelfth version of the opening number," Knechtges added.
But as past Triangle shows have demonstrated, it is this journey and gestation period of the show that result in the entertaining and witty finished product for the audience.
Silverstein predicts that the audience will be enthused by the show's constant energy. "It's wacky, wonderful, exciting, dramatic — and the variety of the wackiness makes the show infectious."
Knechtges also pointed out that, though the show is a review, the "wackiness" is unified and coherent. "There are recurring characters that make the show have a through line — which is a big plus with reviews."
So, is musical comedy dead? With it's new fall show, including the traditional all-male kickline, Triangle proves that, on the contrary, musical comedy is still very much alive and kicking.
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