The big gay jamboree review
Off-Broadway Review: THE Great GAY JAMBOREE (Orpheum)
JUST AS PROMISED, IT’S BIG!
IT’S GAY! IT’S JAMBOREEING!
Yes, there is a way to escape the post-election blues for 90 minutes: The Big Gay Jamboree at the Orpheum Theatre is the sublimely ridiculous remedy we need. Marla Mindelle — who co-wrote the book with Jonathan Parks-Ramage and the songs with Philip Drennen — definitely has a knack for musical pastiche. Not to speak of she does a superb job starring in this dazzling funfest, which had a packed property roaring with laughter at pop-culture references and satirical jabs — how often can you utter that?
Still dressed in a nasty party outfit, Stacey (Mindelle) — a raunchy, disillusioned musical theatre graduate — wakes up with a terrible hangover next to four pure singing girls who claim to be her sisters, hovering over her and smiling maniacally. She is trapped in a 1940s Golden Age musical appreciate Broadway’s Oklahoma! in a rural town called Bareback. What follows is her preposterous escape from this nightmare of old timey righteousness. There’s a slew of pop-culture references, some of which flew over my h
The Big Gay Jamboree
THE BIG Male lover JAMBOREE PLAYED ITS FINAL Show ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2024.
From the Oscar-nominated producers of BARBIE and the delulu author of the Off-Broadway hit TITANIQUE comes THE BIG Homosexual JAMBOREE, a big new musical comedy that’s pushing the envelope…and the gay agenda.
Help! Stacey’s fallen into a musical and she can’t get out. Last night, she got a little bit blackout drunk. This morning, she woke up in some b*tch ass Music Man world where everybody keeps bursting into anthem & dance, and where male lover still just means happy. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe it’s an allergic reaction to her birth control. Or maybe it’s Maybelline (don’t sue us! sponsor us? we’ll talk later). But if Stacey’s truly trapped inside a Golden Age musical, there’s only one way out: vocalize out! Or find the stage door. Whatever gets the most applause.
Starring one of Vanity Fair’s “brightest stars of New York theatre” and the world’s second favorite Celine Dion, MARLA MINDELLE, The Big Queer Jamboree is here to make you laugh, make you cry laughing, and make you laugh crying.
It’s BIG — glowing and splashy and loud, like the great musicals of Broadway’s Golden Age. It’s GAY — both in its old meaning of “happy” and in its reclaimed sense of “bold, out-front homosexual.” And it’s a JAMBOREE — a bigger-than-life musical celebration — of life, though you may not discover it at first. The Big Male lover Jamboree comes at you with all the subtlety of a freight educate, never letting up, overwhelming your senses and any preconceptions you might possess come in with, leaving you laughing helplessly with an added touch of “oh my God, I can’t think they went there!”
The Big Homosexual Jamboree uses tropes of musicals past to tell the story of Stacey (Marla Mindelle, Titanique), a would-be singer-actress who wakes up after a bender to find herself in a cheery opening number, unsure of where she is. Her four “sisters” announce it is her “big male lover wedding day”. They are joined by the townspeople who are celebrating the upcoming wedding — but not telling Stacey who she’s getting married to, or how she got there to begin with. Stacey has flashbacks to the night before, partying with “her gays” and organism disappointed by her boyfriend Keith (Alex Moff
THE BIG GAY JAMBOREE Is Big Gay Fun — Review
It is with superb honor that I divide Marla Mindelle’s deranged Off-Broadway rule has extended. Distant live gay stupidity! Prolonged live Jason Robert Brown references! Long live hilarious, original musicals! Mindelle’s The Big Gay Jamboree, joins her sister Titaniqueas the newest, hottest ticket for that gay guy you know. It’s here. It’s queer. It’s where STOMP used to be.
Unlike Titanique, Mindelle has teamed up with book writer Jonathan Parks-Ramage and composer and lyricist Philip Drennen to create a new musical comedy featuring original songs. Also unlike Titanique (and I say this with love), the budget has seemingly increased, thanks to producers like Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment.
Even though irreverent, queer theatre is thriving (see Oh Mary!’s tape breaking run), the Suits would say TheBig Male lover Jamboree is a “risk.” Titanique was lighting in a bottle, largely credited to Mindelle’s Lucille Lortel Award-winning kooky-crazy performance. Could that be replicated, this time with a bigger budget and original story?
Stuffed to the brim with pop culture references, musical theatre allusions, and absolute, bat-