Theatre Reviews & Features Overheard on the corner of First Avenue and St. Mark’s Place on a recent muggy September night:
Like, you totally knew about this, right? Like oh. My. God. You totally knew about this, right? OhmyGodohmyGod, I mean, how could you not know about this? Now, now, now, now, now, listen, sit down, you are not going to believe — yes! This is, like, totally serious! No!! No way!! Yes!! Yes way. No: yes way. Shut up — it’s a musical. Like, totally not, um, authorized or anything, but remember Saved by the Bell? I didn’t watch it that much but — ohmyGodohmyGod, he was so cute. No: the other one. Are you on crack? Not him: he did porn. Right: him. And Elizabeth Berkeley was in Showgirls.
John Duff as A.C. Slater, Justin Cimino as Screech Powers and Sam Harvey as Zack Morris in Bayside! The Musical! Photos by Curtis Peel.
Bayside! The Musical! is what that promising young intellectual was speaking of, of course, and it turns out the show has already visited the wilds of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway: it first ran almost a year ago at the Kraine Theatre. And it earned some of the most jaw-dropping pull-quotes since everybody’s Great-Grandma Sylvia purred “I loved Cats” through her ventilator. For example, the website DNAInfo.com wrote “We definitely think Slater was gay!,” thereby saving all of American theatre criticism from certain death. We can just imagine how the cast interpolated this encomium into the letter they sent to Mario Lopez inviting him to the show. (OK, we made that up. We’re just trying to get Mario’s address. And phone number. So sue us.) The quotes get even better as regards the authors of Bayside! The Musical!, Bob and Tobly McSmith, who just a few months ago were described as “pseudonymous” when another of their shows, Showgirls the Musical, was proclaimed “Better Than a 10-Inch Dick!” on Gawker.com. (What a well-placed exclamation point. We trust Gawker knows what it’s talking about.)
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