Apathy: The Gen X Musical

Oh, pardon me. I was just experiencing a moment of apathy. The other night I experienced about two hours of apathy and had a hell of a good time.

A common sense rule in musical theatre is that you must establish empathy for your main characters early on. The audience has to have a reason to like them, otherwise there's no reason for them to care about their story. In Apathy: The Gen X Musical, composer/lyricist/bookwriter Mickey Zetts chucks that silly notion into the sewer and fills his show with characters who are too self-centered, too stupid or just plain too mean to give a damn about, freeing up the audience to laugh at them, not with them. And in a sense, our not caring about them makes us just as self-centered, stupid and mean. Naw, I'm getting way too deep.

It's 1995, a time when America's post-graduate youth is greeted by adulthood with a severe lack of opportunity in the job market. Overqualified and uninspired, the stereotype of Generation X, a term that came from Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel about people who choose to distance themselves from society, is that of cynical slackers looking down on those who achieve success through conformity, while they're still living mostly off their parents. Zetts embraces these stereotypes and has a talented cast, under Paula D'Alessandris' deft direction, play them to their least attractive, and funniest, extremes.

There is no plot, except to say that a group of friends spend a night doing nothing. I'd call the show a character study if I wasn't afraid it would make the author laugh derisively in my face.

We're in the Hollywood, Florida living room of Babbet (Fiona Choi), a fashionably dressed drug dealer who sees no reason why everyone on planet Earth should not prioritize their lives around her needs. Her second act ballad, "It's Not That I'm a Bitch (It's just that you don't matter)" pretty much sums up her life philosophy, especially when it comes to her Desert Storm vet boyfriend, Schleppin' Jones (Matt Miniea). Although Jones lacks the self-esteem to stand up to her, he does has a theme song, played at his entrance and exit by the mute-when-not-singing Malphoof (Zetts). Malphoof provides the only musical accompaniment for most of the songs with his 12-string acoustic guitar.

Stopping by for a visit is Laka (Sami Rudnick), a goth girl with an addictive personality. In one hilarious routine she is frantically alternating drags off a cigarette with sucks from an inhaler. Laka is feeling low because, as she sings, her parents have limited her allowance to "Two-fifty and a bag of weed a week."

(A side note about Laka: When Rudnick first enters she looks pregnant, but there's never any mention of her condition and throughout the show she's the target of fat jokes, making me think her padding was just misleading. But in the end it turns out the character really was pregnant, making her cigarette smoking, drinking and acid dropping a bit less funny.)

Filander (Ryan G. Metzger) is, for lack of a better term, the male romantic lead, as it's his goal for the evening to bag the hot blonde. (More on her later.) When we first meet him, he's making prank phone calls to his grandmother and near the show's end he leads the cast in a "Modern Irish Drinking Song", proclaiming that, "Life to me is a party between the thighs of a mademoiselle."

The hot blonde in question is Tangerine (Samantha Leigh Josephs), a vapid party girl whose idea of a life goal is to find a Kennedy to marry her. Tangerine makes the mistake of inviting a police officer friend named Bill (Duncan Pflaster) along to Babbet's place, and he becomes the genial straight man in a we-gotta-hide-the-drugs routine.

The closeted Latin pretty boy, Nicodemus (Ethan Gomez), rounds out the malcontented guest list. It should be noted that not one character in the piece considers him or herself to be a romantic bohemian starving artist.

Zetts' score is a catchy selection of pop tunes with acidic lyrics, highlighted by Babbet's bitchy tribute, "I Love Her To Her Face", and "Mr. Bitter's Blues", Nicodemus' Spanish-rhythmed mockery of an over-the-hill coffee house entertainer. The company is filled with strong pop singers, energetic club dancers and comic actors who nail every joke.

Director D'Alessandris succeeds in the unenviable task of creating interesting staging for a cast of characters who are usually too lazy to get off the couch. In a gag that speaks volumes, Filander announces he has to go to the bathroom, but after a half-hearted effort to get up from the bean bag, he decides its not worth the effort.

Apathy: The Gen X Musical is full of the kind of people who'd annoy the hell out of you if you were dumb enough to attempt a friendship with them. But at a safe emotional distance, they can be very entertaining.

Cast photos: (clockwise from upper left) Fiona Choi, Sami Rudnick, Samantha Leigh Josephs, Ethan Gomez, Ryan G. Metzger, Mickey Zetts, Matt Miniea and Duncan Pflaster