Tiny 'Gutenberg' Delivers Big Laughs, Insight and Warmth

  Now playing for a limited run in the 65-seat Gallery space two flights up at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago, "Gutenberg! The Musical!" is a fun night out, delivering more laughs than many a big budget show, along with some quick insights into real topics like religion, literacy and anti-semitism. Along the way, audiences attuned to the aspirations of the young, of the creative and of the honest to make a contribution to society may catch a glimpse of themselves and their more innocent friends in the two quirky, hard-working and humanly caring characters onstage.

This show, "Gutenberg! The Musical!," which was developed in New York and London in 2003-2006 and was presented at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September of 2006 (winning three awards including the festival's award for best book), opened at the 59E59 Theater and transferred to The Actors' Playhouse in Manhattan later that same season. Those incarnations all starred co-writers (of book, score and lyrics) Scott Brown and Anthony King as the young writers Bud Davenport and Doug Simon, giving a backers' audition for their musical of the same name. Writers Bud and Doug hope that we, the audience, include "big Broadway producers" among our ranks, as we watch them explain and perform a reported 30 roles and 16 songs, with the help of musical director and pianist T. O. Sterrett—who, if I remember correctly, is referred to as "Charles" or some such moniker, banging away wonderfully on an upright piano with black cloth draped over the back.

Young but busy producer John Pinckard has brought the show's original director, Alex Timbers, to Chicago for a production with local actors, ready for success here with t-shirts and refrigerator magnets already available in the theatre lobby, and plans for an original cast album of the Chicago production to be recorded soon. The actors cast here, Breon Bliss as Bud and Alex Goodrich as Doug, are physically quite different from each other, with Bliss the shorter, bearded and balding one and Goodrich the taller, clean-shaven and curly-haired. They are individually likeable, and they work together beautifully. Both of these qualities may be due to the fact that both actors are involved in bringing the arts to area schools, Bliss with the Shakespeare-oriented A Crew of Patches and Goodrich with the writing team Barrel of Monkeys.

The plot of the show that Bud and Doug have written and hope to bring to Broadway via this backers' audition concerns not actor Steve Guttenberg but printing press inventor Johann Gutenberg, along with an evil, controlling monk who tries to stop him from disseminating knowledge via the printed word and a love-sick young woman whom Bud and Doug have (somewhat snarkily) dubbed "Helvetica."  Goodrich's Doug portrays Gutenberg as vacantly heroic, and Bliss's Bud plays the monk as a refugee from the hills of Appalachia, a la "Deliverance."  The men take turns portraying the innocent, confused and lovely Helvetica. She is also at times portrayed by a trucker's hat, of which there are a couple dozen sitting on a table upstage center. You see, the way that Bud and Doug indicate which character they are portraying is by not only explaining it but by donning a trucker's hat with the character's name written on it. Some of them bear names like "Drunk 1," "Drunk 2," "Boot Black," "Woman," "Daughter," "Old Black Narrator," etc.  "Monk" has a sidekick, "Young Monk," whom he regularly stabs in the chest with a pencil. You get the idea. But you really owe it to yourself to see it played out.

And you know, I was afraid that the names on costumes idea, which got such a bad rap in the musical theater world when the original Broadway production of "Merrily We Roll Along" went so terrible awry, would bode badly for "Gutenberg!"  Have no such fears.  If costume designer Emily Rebholz is responsible for the hats, she had done well. Lighting designer Keith Parham's lights go a whole lot further than one would think possible in evoking the worlds of renaissance Germany and the Broadway stage. And the actors and directors (Ian Unterman is credited as co-director) bring clear comic technique and timing to every aspect of this performance.

The songs are a serviceable jumble of musical theater and popular music styles—my favorite is the first act song about biscuits which I'm guessing is called, "Biscuits!" (Wait for that cast album to see for sure, I guess.) There are production numbers, ballads, charm songs, prologues and finales, etc., all explained with the earnest terminology of those schooled in the Lehman Engel tradition of workshop-based musical theater writing. (By the way, just for the record, Bud is the composer, Doug is the bookwriter, and they collaborated on the lyrics.)

While it will undoubtedly be popular with musical theater insiders familiar with jokes about shows with weak second acts, the backers' audition as a way to finance a Broadway production and the use of the turntable in at least one very well-known international smash hit set in Western Europe, the show also will appeal to those who don't like traditional musicals, or even turn their noses up a little at the idea of, say, "South Pacific" or even "Avenue Q." Some would call "Gutenberg!" an affectionate spoof.  Others may say it is exactly what young writers should do—write about what they know. I just say it is a light-as-air comedy about pursuing your dreams, and well worth seeing.

In its combination of "Forever Plaid" meets "Forbidden Broadway" meets "[title of show]" meets "The Fantasticks," I must say that if you have expectations of spectacle and splash, this show is not for you. If you expect a night of gentle fun, well, you will be pleasantly surprised that there is so much richness here, and yes, so much of that fun. The show is frequently hilarious, as a matter of fact. The opening night audience had a grand time. And people should be able to read, to love and to dream, right? And the world needs a little hope these days, doesn't it? Exactly. You can find it all at the Royal George.

"Gutenberg! The Musical!" plays Wednesdays through Sundays at the Royal George Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted St. in Chicago. Tickets are $35.00. Student and senior rates are also available at $25.00. Tickets are available through the theater box office (call 312-988-9000) and through Ticketmaster.  For more information, please visit www.gutenbergthemusical.com.

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