September 30, 2005
By NEIL GENZLINGER
There’s good news for anyone who accidentally stumbled into a pop-ploitation musical like “Good Vibrations” or “All Shook Up” and has been feeling sugar-saturated ever since: an antidote is available at the Samuel Beckett Theater. It’s called “The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World,” and watching it is much like listening to songs by the real Shaggs: unsettling, disturbing, challenging, even a little awe-inspiring.
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From left, Amy Eschman, Dana Acheson and Jamey Hood in “The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World.” |
The Shaggs were a trio of sisters in New Hampshire - Dot, Betty and Helen Wiggin - whose father, at least as portrayed here, more or less ordered them to form a rock band in the late 1960’s, hoping it would be his ticket out of the millworker life. The girls were not blessed with natural musical talent - their songs sound like under-rehearsed Roches; some are almost painful to listen to. But their father, Austin (compellingly played here by Peter Friedman), seems to have heard only the good notes.
He sunk the family savings into the band and the recording, in 1969, of an album called “Philosophy of the World,” not realizing that he was being fleeced by the producer. A decade later, though, the album resurfaced, its punk/garage-band/nihilistic sound suddenly registering, with some, as alternative-rock genius. A cult following resulted.
“The Shaggs,” part of the New York Musical Theater Festival, tells this story fearlessly and with the same disregard for the conventions of musical theater that the Shaggs had for the conventions of pop music. The show doesn’t use the Shaggs’ songs, though we hear pieces of them; its music is by the versatile Gunnar Madsen, with lyrics by him and the book writer, Joy Gregory. Their unpredictable concoction is sometimes funny, but just as often grim; a song late in the play called “Driving Home (The Rage),” with the now-fractured Wiggin family together in a car, is downright scary.
Making it all work are the actresses playing the sisters: Jamey Hood as the cheery Dot, Amy Eschman as the brooding Betty and Dana Acheson as the silent Helen. Among other things, they achieve the deceptively difficult feat of sounding like the world’s worst rock trio at some points, but blending beautifully at others, as we hear the band the way Austin imagined it sounded.
“The Shaggs” ends up being not merely a biographical look at a 60’s curiosity, but also a jolting portrait of a man’s desire to escape ordinariness, and of his daughters’ desire to return to it. “Trash should die,” Betty says early in the play, talking about plastic-foam coffee cups, but perhaps really referring to the Shaggs’ music. “You should burn it and bury it and never think about it again.” Not really, because sometimes yesterday’s trash can provide today’s insights.
from LA & Chicago Productions
Los Angeles Times Critics’
“Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen’s terrific new musical captures the damaged, resilient voices of these New Hampshire teen girls, forced to become a rock band. It’s a birth-of-a-band back-stager with unsettling overtones of abuse and small-town horror – ‘School of Rock’ as conceived by David Lynch.”
Awfully Good
By Jack Helbig
May 7, 2004
“The beauty of Gregory’s writing is that she doesn’t flinch from describing just how weird the Wiggins were . . . Gregory’s script sugarcoats nothing . . . Gregory is quite honest about how badly, or at least how oddly, The Shaggs play. But in brilliant dream-like sequences, she and tunesmith Madsen reveal the beautiful music in the Wiggin sisters’ souls . . . in fact, there is a lot of beautiful music throughout this show . . . and Gregory’s lyrics are every bit as expressive as her evocative dialogue . . . In every way this is a remarkable show.”
The Shaggs Hits the Wrong Note Just Right
By Jeff Favre
November 14, 2003
" . . . writer and lyricist Joy Gregory has brought The Shaggs to the stage with one of the most inventive and emotionally layered new musicals to premiere in Los Angeles in several years . . . Gregory and Madsen have created a show that is a joy to watch, and even more exciting to hear . . . (that) paint(s) an intriguing portrait of how this indescribable sound was born. And any music that inspires a musical this powerful can’t be bad. This is a show that likely will be produced for many years to come.”
OUTSIDER IN: The Shaggs’ Unworldly Philosophy
by Steven Mikulan
November 21-27, 2003
“Gregory’s heartfelt band biography…present(s) an endearing portrait that avoids the saccharine and, indeed, occasionally pricks the audience with some wry imagery.”
“…this is a solid and funny telling of pop history, and nowhere does Gregory better demarcate the schizophrenic divide between mainstream entertainment and neurotic expression than in Act I’s recording-studio scene. When a spotlight illuminates the girls playing with carefree abandon, the music sounds, well, listenable; but when… lighting emphasizes the studio’s stunned engineers, we hear what they hear – the real-life Shaggs from their album. It’s a heartbreaking yet hilarious moment.”
Play That Flunky Music, White Girls
By John Esther
November 13, 2003
“Bittersweet, raucous, talented and unique, John Langs’ direction of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World keeps the Hot Properties series at [Inside] the Ford brewing with another successful triumph.”
Shaggs Forever
by Anne Kelly Saxenmeyer
November 5-11, 2003
“Running through some really entertaining musical numbers is a true story that could’ve been plucked right out of Greek drama, and Gregory and Langs agreed that the Wiggin family lore is what intrigued them most about the project. Said Langs, struck by the ‘divine strangeness’ by which his production has become a chapter in the Shaggs saga: ‘I feel very much as the curtain comes down each night that we’re a part of whatever this prophecy was. We are the torchbearers for it in some bizarre way because here we are in 2003, telling their story to hundreds of people, continuing to create the legend of the Shaggs as it was told by Austin’s mother years ago.’ ”
from LA & Chicago Productions
A selection of the 2003 Awards for The Shaggs: The Philosophy of the World
Produced by the Powerhouse Theatre Company at [Inside] the Ford:
LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards
WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL
Backstage West Garland Awards
BEST PRODUCTION - Powerhouse Theatre Company at [Inside] the Ford
MUSICAL SCORE - Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen
DIRECTION - John Langs
The 25th Annual LA Weekly Theater Awards
MUSICAL OF THE YEAR - Powerhouse Theatre
Also nominated for:
PLAYWRITING - Joy Gregory
2003 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards
MUSICAL SCORE - Gunnar Madsen (Music) and Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen (Lyrics)
Also nominated for:
BEST PRODUCTION - The Powerhouse Theatre Company
Beverly Hills Outlook Awards
BEST MUSICAL OF THE YEAR
BEST PRODUCTION, Runner Up
Travis Michael Holder's Ticketholder Awards (Entertainment Today)
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen
BEST PRODUCTION, Runner Up