The Farce Is Strong With This Star Wars Musical: Off-Broadway Review

A Musical About Star Wars review: the Off-Broadway parody

Star Wars invites mockery, and its fans know it. A franchise that gave a squid-faced race the name Calamari and a Coruscant death-stick dealer the name Sleazebaggano is not asking for solemnity. Fans have long turned the silliest background details into folklore, and Willrow Hood, the Bespin extra seen fleeing Cloud City with an ice cream maker, is a good example, since devotees gave him an entire backstory. Put those instincts on a stage and the result is this Star Wars musical.

The original film opened in May 1977 under the plain title Star Wars. The A New Hope subtitle came later, when the film was re-released in 1981 as Episode IV, so a show about fandom has nearly half a century of material to draw on, including every awkward rebranding, special edition and sequel trilogy the audience has argued about.

A Musical About Star Wars was written by Tom D'Angora, Taylor Crousore and Scott Richard Foster, with original score and lyrics by Billy Recce, according to Playbill. Tom and Michael D'Angora direct, and Ashley Marinelli choreographs. The production had Off-Broadway engagements at Theatre Row and St. Luke's Theatre in 2019, saw a second run cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, and played Las Vegas before settling at the AMT Theater, at 354 W. 45th St., in the summer of 2023. Performances began July 7 and were extended through January 21, 2024.

The pitch is simple. Two superfans, Scott (Taylor Crousore) and Taylor (Stone Mountain), have written a musical about Star Wars, which they regard as the greatest thing ever to happen in the history of the galaxy and, in the show's running boast, much, much, much better than Star Trek. They are trying to get it into New York Comic Con, the one convention that has not yet banned them.

The structure is a show inside a show. Scott and Taylor are staging their musical for an audience they hope will include a convention selection committee, and the real audience takes the place of that committee. It is a tidy device, because it excuses every rough edge: if a number feels homemade, that is because the characters made it at home. The roughness is part of the joke, and it spares the production from having to pretend to be a slick Broadway spectacle.

Parody is an old way to love a franchise. Mel Brooks's Spaceballs took on the original trilogy in 1987, and fan-made takes have kept coming since. What sets this Star Wars musical apart is that the people in the story are the fans, so the jokes land on the audience's own habits, from convention lines to arguments about canon.

Their problem is Emily (Maggie McDowell), the actress they hired. She describes herself as an actor-vist, she does not care about Star Wars, and she thinks it is rather sexist. Her plan is to sabotage the production from inside. Scott and Taylor decide the only fix is to convert her, which gives the evening its structure: a sales pitch for a galaxy far, far away delivered to a skeptic who keeps asking fair questions.

What works: the songs and the satire

The show is an excuse for songs and sketches, and the hit rate is good. A rap about the prequels in the style of Hamilton has no business working, and it becomes one of the highlights. The joke is built into the plot: Scott and Taylor have no idea who Lin-Manuel Miranda is until Emily tells them he wrote the new cantina music for the sequels. Imagining "Anakin Skywalker" where "Alexander Hamilton" should be does the rest.

Another high point is "The Rules Song," a tribute to copyright law and its fair-use exemptions, which is the legal ground that lets anyone stage a musical about Star Wars at all. American courts have treated parody as a legitimate fair use since the Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, which gives the song a real-world footing as well as a laugh. A lobby shirt prints the relevant passages of the law on the back, so a buyer can cite them if a lawyer ever turns up. The show also lampoons the fandom itself, tagging the generations as Gen X-Wing and Millennial Falcon.

The cast commits at full volume. The stage is small and the performers use all of it, bouncing off every wall, which is a fair match for the material and slightly too much in the opening minutes, when the pace is frantic. After that they settle. Maggie McDowell has the strongest voice in the company and saves her best moment for late in the evening.

What does not: uneven jokes and a few easy shots

Not every song lands. Some numbers coast on a reference alone, and a few jokes about Star Wars fans being friendless virgins are easy targets that the show does not need. There are not many of them, but they drag against the better, warmer writing about why people love these films.

The generational material is smarter than the stereotype jokes, and a sharper script would have leaned further into it. The fandom's divide between people who saw the original in a theater and people who grew up on streaming is a real conversation, and the show raises it only in passing.

The costumes steal the night

Each time the Wilhelm scream plays, the two leads change into a new cosplay outfit, and the costumes are the production's most original idea. They look exactly like the work of a fan with a lot of passion, a small budget and limited sewing skills, which is the point. An AT-AT built from what looks like pantyhose and a carbon-frozen Han Solo made of spray-painted foil are the standouts. In the show's own explanation, the outfits were made by Taylor's mother, in spite of her carpal tunnel.

The effect is affectionate. Handmade costumes are the heart of fan culture, and the production treats the clumsy ones with the same tenderness as the polished ones.

A Musical About Star Wars at a glance

• Venue: AMT Theater, 354 W. 45th St., Manhattan.
• Run: performances began July 7, 2023, and were extended through January 21, 2024.
• Writers: Tom D'Angora, Taylor Crousore and Scott Richard Foster; score and lyrics by Billy Recce.
• Directors: Tom and Michael D'Angora, with choreography by Ashley Marinelli.
• Leads: Taylor Crousore (Scott), Stone Mountain (Taylor), Maggie McDowell (Emily).
• Earlier runs: Theatre Row and St. Luke's Theatre in 2019, plus a Las Vegas engagement.

The Star Wars musical verdict

Overall, this is a fun evening for anyone who knows the saga well enough to catch the references, and a sturdier one for people who can laugh at what they love. It does a decent job of showing why Star Wars is cool, even when it is ridiculous, and the show argues that the silliness is part of the appeal.

The sharpest instinct in the writing is the choice of antagonist. Emily is not a villain, only a viewer, and her skepticism gives the script a reason to explain what the saga does well. That is a better engine than a straight parody song list, because it ties the numbers to a question the audience can feel: why does anyone love this? When the answers come, they are funnier because someone is pushing back.

Newcomers will get less. The humor leans on knowledge of the films, from the prequels to the sequels, and a first-time viewer would miss many of the jokes. Casual fans should be fine, and committed ones will get the most.

A show about fandom lives or dies on affection, and this one has plenty. The loudest laughs come from its willingness to poke fun at the thing it worships. It stays uneven, but the hits are strong enough that the misses fade, and the closing insistence that Star Wars is much, much, much better than Star Trek gets the last word.

Sources

• A Musical About Star Wars, official site — cast, creators and performance dates