Theater: George Street Playhouse / 9 Livingston Ave, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901
Synopsis:
When Mitch Martino gets fired from his Wall Street job on his 40th birthday, he has no choice but to move back in with his mom . . . in New Jersey. On his first day back, his best friend from high school suggests that they "get the band back together!" Mitch thinks his buddy is crazy. But when his arch nemesis from high school threatens to foreclose on his house unless he agrees to a re-match of their infamous battle of the bands . . . Mitch realizes he may have no choice.
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October 12, 2013: A 40-year-old man sings “I slept with your mother” to a horrified buddy from high school. A rabbi break-dances in an exhilarating hip-hop version of “Hava Nagila.” A “Welcome to Sayreville, N.J.” sign gets entrance applause when it is rolled onstage.
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October 11, 2013: You can go home again after all: the question is, what happens if you do? That’s the issue in “Gettin’ the Band Back Together,” an uninhibited new musical comedy having its world premiere at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick. The premise of this over-the-top romp is that 40-year-old Mitch Martino has lost his Wall Street job, and the lifestyle that went with it, and has moved back to his mother’s house in Sayreville – the former home, not so incidentally, of real-life rock star Jon Bon Jovi.
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October 11, 2013: George Street Playhouse has masterfully produced a new rock musical, Gettin' the Band Back Together. Opening their 40th Anniversary Season, the show runs through October 27th. This world premiere is the clever and comical story of four high school buddies who reunite their band, Juggernaut, for a "Battle of the Bands" competition in their hometown of Sayreville, New Jersey.
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October 11, 2013: This new musical takes pride, and without prejudice, in embracing well-worn cliches and in incorporating as many stereotypical aspects of human behavior as possible. It also empowers the kind of trite plot situation that would normally send shivers down your back. Actually, it has no right being as funny and as entertaining as it is. This creation by Ken Davenport and a group called The Grundleshotz and Mark Allen who wrote the very agreeable music and snappy lyrics (inspired according to program notes by series of improvisations) has all the earmarks of a lampoon of those corny musicals about winning a contest or triumphing in the wake of impossible odds. It has all the visible hashtags to identify it as an anomaly of a new kind of musical comedy genre: Do everything you can to fail and see how well that can work in your favor.
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October 11, 2013: I’m rarely blown away by a theater performance — certainly I’m impressed with many. But to really lift me off the seat, it’s got to be pretty special. Gettin’ the Band Back Together, at George Street Playhouse through Oct. 27, is one of those rare productions that gets the blood pumping. It’s tuneful, hilarious, and thrilling.
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