Review: GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL! at The Abbey Theater Of Dublin

After years of striving to build the Abbey Theater of Dublin into one of the more respected theaters in Columbus, director supervisor Joe Bishara put on a disaster of a musical.

Intentionally.

Bishara (who plays Doug Simon), and Jonathan Collura (who takes on the role of Bud Davenport) star as the two lone producers and actors in the farcical GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL!, which ran Aug. 9-10 and 16-17 at the Abbey Theater of Dublin (5600 Post Road in Dublin, Ohio). During the two-act musical, the two actor/writers try to convince unseen investors to put their faith (and hard earned cash) in a musical based on Gutenberg, not E.T. and POLICE ACADEMY star Steve Gutenberg, but printing press inventor Johannes Gutenberg.

 Like SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER, the fraudulent production at the heart of THE PRODUCERS, GUTENBERG! is a doomed, ticking time bomb. Unlike the Mel Brooks-penned musical, in which the production was supposed to fail, Simon and Davenport earnestly believe their show will be a HAMILTON-sized hit.

In the preamble to the show, the audience learned the two poured all their limited resources into creating this preview.

“The reason we were able to rent this theater was because my uncle took up hang gliding,” Davenport explained, then his expression darkened. “Then he stopped.”

In a cost cutting measure, the two playwrights decided to take on every role in the 20-person cast. To differentiate each character, Bishara and Collura donned a different baseball cap with the character’s name on it (DRUNK 1, DRUNK 2, WOMAN, DAUGHTER) and gave that persona a different voice and personality quirks.

GUTENBERG! was conceived by Scott Brown and Anthony King as a 45-minute, one-act musical for the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. And there were times during the show when you felt maybe it might have been better in its short form.

In 2023, it took a gigantic triple jump forward when it became the first show actors Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells performed together after their landmark hit, THE BOOK OF MORMON. GUTENBERG! evolved from being about a show struggling to get to the “nation’s capital, Broadway” to being a show about a show trying to get to Broadway while actually running on Broadway.

 To make a good farce work, one needs to have a far-fetched, yet believable premise, jokes that appeal to a wide variety of an audience, and characters who don’t seem to realize what they’re doing is odd, outlandish, and strange.  Abbey director Niko Carter had all three for GUTENBERG!

A BELIEVABLE PREMISE

On the surface, Davenport and Simon’s idea about basing a musical on the 15th century inventor of the printing press may seem farfetched. Often, Broadway plays it safe when it tries to create the next big thing, converting beloved television shows, movies, and books into tightly packaged, two-act musicals. However, every once in a while shows come from that land outside of the box. Who would have thought a musical about the first U.S. Secretary of Treasury would be a huge hit?

After attempting to find success with other preposterous ideas like STEPHEN KING! THE MUSICAL! and a prequel to THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, Simon and Davenport decided to do a show on the person who created mass media. After an exhaustive, 20-minute search on Google, the two learned biographical information on the creator of the printing press was “scant.”

“We decided to go in a different direction … historical fiction,” Simon said.

“Which means fiction that’s true,” Davenport added.

The two then crayon in the missing spaces in Gutenberg’s coloring book, adding hilarious speculations about what life in 15th century Germany must have been like.

ACCESSIBLE HUMOR

 In many ways, GUTENBERG! follows the familiar path of parodies like THE DROWSY CHAPERONE and THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG that elbow regular theatergoers with inside jokes about the genre without going over the heads of the rest of the audience. Davenport and Simon announce they want to make their musical “important” and important musicals must tackle issues like racism, homophobia, and people with half a face. They decided GUTENBERG! would tackle the problems of Nazism in 1500s Germany.

“History and every INDIANA JONES movie except THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL have taught us that Nazis … are really uncool,” Davenport said.

Since they are trying to sell their musical, the two feel the need to explain how each song fits in the musical cookie cutter. They introduce numbers with subtitles like “The I Want Song” (the song of unrequited love of Gutenberg’s assistant Helvetica), “The Song Every Tween Girl Struggles to Sing in the Shower,” and the unrelated dance break. One high point was “Monk With Me,” in which the evil monk outlines his WICKED plan to keep the town of Schlimmer illiterate and when he hit the climatic note, he was lit in an Elphaba-like green spotlight.

“I know a lot of you were probably wondering and, yes … that scene was inspired by STAR WARS,” Simon said.

BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS DOING REALLY WEIRD THINGS

GUTENBERG! was an acting tour de force for Bishara and Collura. The two played at least 10 characters apiece, often delivering one line as one character and the next as a different person. The challenge for the two was not only to keep straight what person had which accent and quirk, but also to keep switching baseball caps each time they changed to a new character. Collura and Bishara often precariously balanced four to five caps at a time on their heads as they leapfrogged from character to character.

While the play was in the development stage, several actors played the roles of Davenport and Simon before Gad and Rannells. Yet the pair’s thumbprints were all over the Abbey Theater of Dublin’s production. Listen closely to the cadence of Bishara and Collura and you can hear the reflections and inflections of Elders Price and Cunningham.

Some plays dent the Fourth Wall between the stage and the audience. Others obliterate it. In GUTENBERG! Bishara and Collura acted as if they had never heard of the concept of a fourth wall. They played directly to the audience, explaining their ideas to them, and even encouraging them to sing “We Eat Dreams” along with them in the finale of the show.

It may sound hokey. Yet when the two were playing Davenport and Simon, Collura and Bishara conveyed a sense of sincerity and a neediness to please their audience. Regardless of how wrong the musical went, the audience found itself pulling for them and hoping against hope their goofy show will have enough redeemable qualities to be picked up.

Perhaps the worst part about reviewing this Abbey show is everything had to be described in the past tense, with GUTENBERG! having only four performances with Aug. 17 being its last one. Keep your fingers crossed this farce will make a return appearance and stay much longer the next time.

Photo illustration: Daniel Rodriguez Hijo