For your typical American male, adolescence is fraught with horror. The voice cracks, and the peach fuzz sprouts. The hormones rage, and the prom looms. The only solution is to become a werewolf.
At least, that sure solves a lot of problems for Mikey, the hero of the new musical at Dad's Garage. When the teen surrenders to the lycanthropic beast lurking within, his lacrosse team breaks its 25-year losing streak, he gets the girl of his dreams, and his boring hometown of Landonville becomes orgy central.
Welcome to “The Change: Another Teenage Werewolf Musical,” playwright Travis Sharp and composer Eric Frampton’s loosely adapted response to the 1985 film starring Michael J. Fox. Directed by returning Dad’s co-founder Sean Daniels, the world premiere honors the theater’s tradition of scrambling pop-culture B matter into wildly inappropriate satirical smash-ups that pulverize notions of political correctness, sexual propriety and suitable language.
Sharp and Frampton, creators of 2008’s “Song of the Living Dead,” have a good time lampooning Hollywood formulas and stereotypes: the sinister principals and overwrought parents, the dumb jocks and cheerleaders, the half-wits with the hearts of gold. True to Dad’s spirit of ridiculous, gross-out situations, these writers pen tasteless lyrics laden with scatological imagery and crude sexual references. And in keeping with the cautionary-tale flavor of the film, they deliver a worthy message about the dangers of giving in to animal instincts and vanity.
Alas, while off to a promising start, “The Change” is a disappointment. The material is every bit as wretched, but not always as clever or entertaining, as we’ve come to expect from Dad’s. And though the ensemble is generally good at hamming it up, you wonder how the piece would sound if it were better sung, or if it were performed to live music instead of recorded.
Ed Morgan’s Mikey is adequate but somehow lacking in leading man charisma. As Helga, the nerdy “disabled” girl who hobbles around on crutches and has a crush on Mikey, Celina Dean is wonderful but sometimes has trouble making herself heard as a singer. (Ditto Chris Blair, who plays Mikey’s father and teenage character Ferris.) As the evil high school principal Van Helsing, Gina Rickicki relies on caricature and isn't especially inspired. As Mikey’s sexually prolific love interest, Bianca, Danielle Maner is good but somewhat under-served, since her nymphet character is more often required to pose than speak. As the fat closet case Sphere (who also has a crush on Mikey), Spencer Stephens may be the single best performer in the group -- a nice singer and a game goofball.
Structurally, “The Change” goes a little off course with its subplots. And because Mikey submits so willingly to his transformation and the attendant reward of being “Big Wolfman on Campus,” the story lacks dramatic tension. Neither he nor the town seems especially terrified. And while I personally am a fan of Dad’s brand of foolishness and am hard to offend, some of the gratuitous sexual nonsense (“Twosome,” “Threesome” and a couple of other titles that are not appropriate for a family newspaper) stretches the boundaries of taste.
Though "The Change" has some funny moments, it may simply be too ambitious an undertaking for low-budget Dad's. Even for an enterprising director like Daniels, it proves that comedy can be a hairy beast.
Theater review
“The Change: Another Teenage Werewolf Musical”
Grade: C+
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Through June 19. $15-$20. Also, a pay-what-you-can performance at 8 p.m. June 7. Dad’s Garage, 280 Elizabeth St., Suite C-101, Atlanta. 404-523-3141, dadsgarage.com.
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