Musical comedy at The Bug has aliens taking over a town with spontaneous song and dance

Have you ever sat in your school cafeteria and secretly hoped everyone would break into song and start dancing on the tables like a real-life High School Musical?

For Paul, the protagonist in The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, that situation is a nightmare come to life. He hates musicals, and an alien invasion is turning his town of Hatchetfield into one. Otherworldly creatures are taking over townspeople’s bodies, causing them to spontaneously sing and dance. With the help of his friends, Paul works to end the musical apocalypse and return his town to its former unremarkable glory.

With music and lyrics by Jeff Blim and a book by Matt and Nick Lang, The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals is a musical comedy originally created by StarKid Productions at the University of Michigan. Singular Sensation Arts is presenting a limited run of The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals at The Bug Theatre in Denver from August 6-9.

Whoever runs Singular Sensation Arts’ social media Instagram deserves a raise for their clever posts. To build anticipation for the production, they’ve been posting fake ads like criminal “WANTED” posters asking if viewers have seen different cast members singing. They also include brief glimpses into each character’s personality like Alex Jacobsen as Emma who “is a crabby barista” and “doesn’t think about the implications.”

This is Singular Sensation Arts’ debut production. Siblings Robert Shelley and Brooke Shelley started the organization in January, and as with any new company, it needs more time to build and grow.

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Spare set

Set designer Rebecca Mcswain and lighting designer Elise (Ren) Keum develop a fairly simple set with a background of different sized rectangles with lights around the borders that glow bright green. The color evokes the “green shit” from aliens that turns people into musical theatre machines.

Paul’s office set is a simple collection of black chairs — desks might have been nice to reinforce the office environment. There is also a bar used for the coffeehouse as well as a later scene when everything descends into chaos.

Choreography and characters

Brooke Shelley’s choreography makes sense for the silly scenes, like when the Hatchetfield police officers are infected and start singing and shaking their hips. For group numbers, there is a lot of coordination involving hand and arm extensions, which is impressive to get in sync. However, given the nature of the show, it could use some more challenging dance sequences throughout to emphasize the epidemic taking over Hatchetfield and captivate the audience.

As Paul, Riley Holmes develops a stoic character who slowly begins to let his guard down as the show progresses. His pure disgust at spontaneous singing continuously fuels the comedy of the production.

Alex Jacobsen as Emma is a glass-half-empty person who hates her job but still has an underlying softness to her. It’s sweet watching Paul walk past Starbucks every day just so he can see Emma at her work. Paul and Emma have a fun dynamic as friends, but they never quite develop the romantic tension that would convince the audience that anything else is possible.

George Zamarripa brings a fun exuberance to his infected version of Mr. Davidson, but his songs are out of his vocal range. Watching him perform in other shows, he is a talented singer, but his falsetto is rough in this production. He does earn one of the best comedic moments of the show during “What Do You Want, Paul?” when he leans over a seated Paul with a photo of his wife in his hands and sings about wanting to be choked.

Brooke Shelley excels as Green Peace Girl – she perfectly captures the frustration of being accosted by someone carrying a petition. Bethany Luhrs as Charlotte conveys the struggles of an anxious woman who is unhappy with her life but doesn’t know how to move forward.

One of the brightest moments in the show is watching Adam Luhrs as Professor Hidgens. He plays a deeply intense doomsday survivalist with the energy of weatherman Rainer Shine on Modern Family. The best running joke is that he relies on an Alexa device as his confidant and companion.

Adam Shupe plays a convincingly dramatic MacNamara, a military general in charge of mitigating the impacts of the musical epidemic. During “You Tied Up My Heart,” Shupe as Charlotte’s husband Sam creates a hilarious moment where he convinces her to set him free. He’s infected but prays on her emotions and does a silly little sidestep dance move while still handcuffed to a chair. Unfortunately, this song is out of his range, limiting the performance.

Rocky tech

One of the most distracting issues during the first night of the production was that actors’ microphones were often still live when they went backstage. You could hear people whispering and clattering sounds as a new scene was taking place onstage.

The balance of music and vocals was consistently off with the instrumental tracks overpowering the voices onstage, and there were many moments of feedback issues. There was also a missed spotlight cue where Paul began a monologue and wasn’t lit until a few sentences in.

When intermission began, the musical already felt very long — audience members nearby also commented on it.

Director Robert Shelley and assistant director Jennifer Grahnquist engineer some memorable moments, but the production is choppy and sometimes awkward when it’s not supposed to be.

Music director Justin Pappas helps create fairly strong harmonies, though the actors’ microphone levels aren’t always balanced. Some of the issues with voices breaking when they reached higher registers could be chalked up to the comedy of the show, but other times, it would have been beneficial to drop down an octave.

Singular Sensation Arts is in the early stages of its development, so the company deserves some grace in working out the kinks as they move along. This production of The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals serves as a starting off point with room for improvement going forward.