Reviewed by Marc Wheeler
“This war is not over, do you hear me?”
“Like crystal.”
If you love your Fringe with a delicious wallop of cringe, look no further than Magnum Opus Theatre Presents: The Yearbook, showing at Theatre of Note‘s mainstage, for a script so hideously bad it’s hilarious… and that’s precisely the point!
For the past decade Magnum Opus Theatre has been making Hollywood dreams come true as they’ve rescued numerous unsolicited, unregistered scripts from the obscurity of film studio trash bins by giving them new life on stage for all our viewing pleasures.
Case in point: The Yearbook.
Think Mean Girls meets… The Room.
Yeah, that bad.
Let me rephrase — that good!
Cue the popular girls, the vomiting bulimic girl (or has she just been raped into pregnancy — find out!), the horny cutter, the dumb jocks, the self-aware tomboy, the jealous ugly girl, the unsuspecting lesbian, the clueless mother, the stern school administrator and the obligatory sex tape. Because duh.
With lines like “I hate men. They are all fuckers with castrated dicks!” “You know, Jackie, you’re fool of shit. Fool of it!” “Lady, save your drama for the bakery downstairs,” and “There’s more to me than beats the odds” you know you’re in for a winner.
Lofty applause goes to Joe Jordan and Vanessa Claire Stewart as the original brainchildren of this wacky science experiment that is Magnum Opus Theatre. John Wuchte does them exceptionally well as The Yearbook director by exquisitely turning lemons into vodka-lemonade — alchemy at its finest.
The cast, simply put, knocks it out of the park. Erin Holt, Heather Klinke, Carrie Wiita, Mike Lanahan, Monica Greene, Aviva Pressman, Rachel Germaine, Colin Wilkie, Erica Ball and Aaron Mendelson all nail the comedy with precision and flair under the guidance of our red-smoking-jacket-wearing, martini-sipping Masterpiece Theatre-style host Thuston Eberhard Hillsboro-Smythe who reads the script verbatim as the Players bring it to life — typos, misspellings, stage directions and all.
If Showgirls drinking games is your cup of tea, run, don’t walk, to get your tickets — no matter who is in your way. To borrow a punctuationally-deprived line from the show:
“Move! Get out of my way God!”
Brandon Clark is Producer. J. Fumero (bless her heart) is “The Yearbook” writer.
Directed by John Wuchte
Cast: Erica Hanrahan-Ball, Rachel Germaine, Monica Greene, Erin Holt, Heather Klinke, Mike Lanahan, Aaron Mendelson, Aviva Pressman, Colin Willkie, Carrie Wiita
Recommended
Synopsis: When High School’s most popular mean girl discovers that all the attention she’s been getting has a dark side, she ditches her alpha clique and takes up with the freaks and geeks. Her former mentor plans revenge, and the student body is rocked by a series of mysterious “accidents.”
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One response to “#HFF15: Magnum Opus Theatre Presents: “The Yearbook”, reviewed”
What great fun! I need to come visit soon. it is interesting that there are now competitions that I see on playwriting list serves for “your worst play.” Who knew there could be life for what a writer tosses – though I think it really takes talent to write something so bad that the audience is in stitches.