‘The [Title of Show] Show’: Broadway Stars Ham It Up on YouTube
1/8/08 at 3:30 PM
The funniest Broadway show of the season is now playing on the Internet. No, it’s not a grainy bootleg of The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein; it’s the equally awkwardly named (but fortunately much funnier) The [Title of Show] Show. A sequel of sorts to 2006's Off Broadway inside-a-musical musical [Title of Show], The [Title of Show] Show starts with the breathless announcement that “[Title of Show] is moving to Broadway!” Followed by this less enthusiastic admission: “We don't know how, we don't know when, we don't know where three things we have to figure out.”
YouTube episodes follow the show's creators, Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen, as they attempt to turn their cult hit into a mainstream Broadway success, but it’s all done with such goofy enthusiasm and blithe denial of the mundane realities of business that there’s never a doubt that the cast is in on the joke. Bell and Bowen spend most of their time dreaming of the fantastic success ahead of them; a recent episode has the two imagining what Broadway stars might replace them in the cast once the show's a monster hit, which leads to a series of charming cameos from stage stars like Kelli O'Hara, Ann Harada, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Jonathan Groff. It's like Ricky Gervais's Extras, but for theater nerds! —Tim Cross
The [Title of Show] Show [Official site]
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