Star Struck - Everyday Rapture - Musical Review

Everyday Rapture - American Airlines Theatre - Broadway, New York, NY - ***1/2 (out of 5 stars)
Book by Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan, Directed by Michael Mayer
Runs until July 11th 2010

Look, most of you are going to say Sherie Rene who?

My theatre follower fairies all already love her from the cast recording of The Last Five Years and for always being great in bad Disney musicals (Aida, The Little Mermaid etc.) and while she's have been in some good shows on Broadway (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Rent, Tommy), Sherie Rene Scott is a Broadway star at best, talented nobody at worst.

So here she is telling her autobiographical tale on Broadway in a musical format that is a one-woman show with a cast of four. Okay... sure! Why not? She may not have the star power of Catherine Zeta Jones or even Kristin Chenoweth (a Broadway star who has managed to poke through the populist zeitgeist) but everyone's got a story. Right?

Now if only we heard more of that story. Sherie's story as a half-Mennonite from Kansas who leaves for the big city to pursue a dream of stardom. Okay, a little cliched but if entirely true, is still kind of winning, especially the way Sherie wistfully tells it, but while we get the inferences of her budding gays left behind in Kansas, and the typical I-don't-belong-here-in-Mennonite-country, there seems to be a huge gap from her first audition to becoming a Broadway star.

On the other hand, it gets us faster to the funniest part of the show, when Sherie discovers a youtube fan who re-enacts her most famous Broadway belting, then rebuffs her when Sherie tries to make contact. Eamon Foley (13) is hysterical as the youtube kid and brings out the gay bitchy energy needed to balance off the rest of the starry show (re-instated by Christine Jones' sets and Kevin Adams' (both of Spring Awakening, American Idiot) lighting.

There isn't much weight to the whole evening of song (including special Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood moments) but Sherie manages to make it a spacey and delightful affair. Like hanging out with a good friend for an evening, even if she is a star in her own mind.

Vance at http://tapeworthy.blogspot.com