(2014, 107 min)
Country: U. S.
Director: Jenn Page
Studio: Border2Border
Language: English
SYNOPSIS: Waiting In The Wings: The Musical is a feature film where two entertainers, destined for the big time, are mismatched in a casting office from two very different online contests. Tony, a stripper from New York, is cast in an Off-Broadway musical and needs to trade in his tear-away trunks for tap shoes and tights. Anthony, a naive musical theatre enthusiast from Montana, needs to decide if he can strip all the way down just to stay in town. Hilarity ensues as they realize that "to make it" they're gonna have to learn some new tricks.
REVIEW:
Waiting In The Wings: The Musical is a goodhearted and well-intentioned spoof of theater making and theater people. If you love inside jokes about The Great White Way, this one may be for you. If you are looking for a film about the legitimate process of creating a new musical, keep looking.
Some might see this as a vanity project for producer/screenwriter/star Jeffrey A. Johns who plays Anthony, a tiny, quirky actor who enters an on-line contest to win a role in a new Off-Broadway musical. However, the producer - who is also running a contest to find America’s hottest male stripper - put his headshot in the wrong folder. So a dumb stripper hunk (Adam Huss) goes into the musical (game work by David Pevsner as the director of that motley troupe) while Anthony becomes the runt of the strip show gang, and becomes the love object of the spectacularly beautiful Lee (Blake Peyrot). Of course there is a gal pal (Rena Strober) who helps sets things aright in the end.
Some people will may find this material hilarious, as it plays into the stereotypes of theater people being delusional idiots, and strippers dumb hunks. The musical numbers which are part of the show being rehearsed are fun – pastiches or critiques of what is wrong with musical theater today – but they don’t ever appear to be part of a real show. And the stripper numbers are just as good as those in ‘Magic Mike.’
But none of it is believable for a moment. There are nice performances from Ethan le Phong as a member of the acting troupe, and Strober, Huss, and Peyrot do their best. Lee Meriwether acquits herself, and Shirley Jones appears as Shirley Jones.
Director Jenn Page has not brought a unified style to the piece so fantasy numbers and reality seem all too often the same.
As the many dedicated fans of 'Smash' will tell you, there is a hunger for material like this. But without a soul or even the faintest connection to reality, Waiting In The Wings: The Musical remains a wacky missed opportunity.
-- Reviewed by David Zak, Chicago Stage Standard (www.chicagostagestandard.com)
