Page Laws — Theater Critic

The plot is a mash-up of every King Arthur legend you’ve ever heard — just in Spam form. We have Arthur out looking for the Holy Grail, Excalibur, and Knights for his Round Table (the table evidently too large for this stage, and so omitted as a prop). The score delivers songs of plot support such as “All for One,” “Find Your Grail” (actually a valid ballad), and the immortal earworm “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The trick to that last one is that it’s a perpetual motion machine — a chorus that repeats itself (with whistling) ad infinitum. “Find Your Grail” is the only song with any real content or message. But after all, one doesn’t go to a Monty Python show for deep musical insights into the human condition

It is not a musical to stand the test of time; nor is it likely to do so. But it has its heart in the right place — at least when it comes to its painful chosen topic: divorce and how to survive it. (Robin Williams, as it turns out, had personal experience: three marriages, two divorces.) The lyrics of the last two-part song sum up the pain, pathos and hope for survival: “All is not lost/ As long as there is (familial) love.”

It is not a musical to stand the test of time; nor is it likely to do so. But it has its heart in the right place — at least when it comes to its painful chosen topic: divorce and how to survive it. (Robin Williams, as it turns out, had personal experience: three marriages, two divorces.) The lyrics of the last two-part song sum up the pain, pathos and hope for survival: “All is not lost/ As long as there is (familial) love.”

So consider your tolerance for the color yellow (all that corn) and for off-color (blue) jokes. You’ll be getting a heapin’ helpin’ of corn porn with your cornpone. The farm-themed evening is chock-full of double, triple and quadruple entendres — almost all of them both ranchy and raunchy.

This is no mere massage of pop songs, no “ampersand-wich” exploiting our good ol’ star-crossed lovers from Verona. It’s instead a hoot of a play that transcends itself by illuminating real political and human issues along with our greatest human writer’s key ideas, often, though not always, great in and of themselves.

To enjoy an evening of Michael Jackson music, by all means, see this show. To probe Michael Jackson’s psyche — look elsewhere.

Is 'Beetlejuice: The Musical. The Musical. The Musical' — at Chrysler Hall through Sunday — worth a see? Depends.