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The New York Musical Theatre Festival 2015
So conceptually muddled is Foolerie that it almost doesn't matter that the fools' show is dreadful, every bit as confusing as what contains it, and essentially not funny at all. The Earl loves Shakespeare, so the actors improvise a mashup of The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and more, during which they're challenged by a supposed real-world audience member (called Knave) who thinks they should devote themselves more to telling people what they need to hear rather than what will merely amusing them. He becomes enmeshed in their mission, teaches them about the marvels and the dangers of love in a way that ends up ruining all their lives, and fights violent ideological duels with the group's leader, Clowne, over whose view of the fool's mission is more palatable—with the loser dying. A riot, this. I'd love to explain further, but it's not possible: Despite the earnest efforts of the company and their director-choreographer Tralen Doler, and a fine physical production (the set is by Jen Price Flick, the wry costumes by Whitney Locher), practically none of what happens over the inflated-to-bursting two-hour-10-minute running time makes the slightest sense. DeAngelo ostensibly wants to explore the relationship between comedy and truth, but these questions get distorted and obscured in the asking by not addressing them directly and addressing them indirectly only through the painfully leaden and labored show-within-the-show. I can't articulate, for example, why it's so vitally important to Clowne that Knave play Shakespeare in the first act and his mother in the second act, but the book insists on it time and time again, to no discernible effect. It all just seems like an excuse for DeAngelo to flaunt his knowledge of the Bard and various conventions of the form from commedia dell'arte to Who's Line Is It Anyway?, but a pointedly stereotypical Shylock, an army of identical Malvolios (all played by the same actor), and an endless string of low-comedy riffs that Benny Hill would have considered excessive point more toward desperation than inspiration. (The current Broadway musical Something's Rotten! has considerably more success mixing together a similar selection of ideas.) The score displays both DeAngelo's talent for crafting beautiful ballads and catchy Broadway-style uptempos with near-equal facility and his too-heavy reliance on his influences (Stephen Sondheim foremost among them; the opening number, "Another Happy Ending," is little more than a leaner, less-addictive "Comedy Tonight"); this gives even the best songs (mainly the Shakespearean quasi-settings, "Who Is Sylvia?" and "Hey Nonny, Nonny", but also the kickline finale "The World Can Be Your Oyster") an inescapably been-there-done-that feel. The cast, which is led by Ian Knauer as the leader and Ryan Breslin as the audience interloper, is good if forever tilting broad (Patrick Massey, the Malvolio, and Patrick Richwood, the one-note Shylock, are particularly guilty of this), and none of them are especially likable. In a show that's more about feting its author than telling a coherent story, how could anyone be? The exception, to the extent there is one, is The Earl: He's the recorded voice of Gilbert Gottfried, whose immediately recognizable, perpetually pinched annoyance and blaring volume force you to listen to him even if you'd rather not. But even that's a challenge. In his first speech, after all, The Duke establishes what will eventually be revealed as a running gag about his bedding the now-deceased Queen Joan of Rivers. It's pretty telling that Foolerie never gets clearer or wittier than that.
Foolerie
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