You and I live in a golden and fine and lucky age of new musical theater. In the past four years, there have been a pile of witty, hip new entries in the field: Avenue Q, Bat Boy, Urinetown, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Wicked, and most recently, The Drowsy Chaperone. My CD finally came in, and I’m in love — The Drowsy Chaperone does everything that Frank Loesser or Oscar Hammerstein or Richard Rogers ever did. It’s an exquisite bit of fluff that knows its sources better than the sources know themselves.
The current trend toward metatheatricality bodes well for The Death of Ayn Rand.
