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They say you have to break a few eggs to make a musical — at least you might have to if you happen to be fame-seeking, second-fiddle playwrights staging “Omelette: The Musical,” alongside the tap-dancing rockstar bards, unreliable soothsayers and starry-eyed Puritans that make up the realm of “Something Rotten.” Woodside Musical Theatre is presenting the show through Oct. 17 at Woodside Performing Arts Center.
“Something Rotten,” with book by John O’Farrell and Karey Kirkpatrick and music and lyrics by Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick, mashes up Will Shakespeare’s greatest hits with Broadway musical tropes, and is stuffed with in-jokes for theater fans, but lots of laughs for regular civilians as well. It opened on Broadway in 2015.
“It’s a very silly show, but it has some sincere moments in it. It’s very much a Renaissance Shakespearean style, but with modern humor. There’s actually a little bit of something for everyone in there,” said San Carlos-based actor Adam Weaver, who plays Nigel Bottom.
Nigel is one half of a playwriting duo, along with his brother Nick, who enlist soothsayer Thomas Nostradamus, (nephew of the famed forecaster), to divine the future of theater in the hopes of finally outdoing the enduringly popular William Shakespeare.
“Nigel is the less confident (brother). He’s more nervous and overall less confident about himself, but in reality, he is actually incredibly talented when it comes to writing, and so a lot of his character throughout the show is realizing that he actually is capable of achieving great writing,” Weaver said.
Nostradamus the younger mixes up a few things as he advises the Bottom brothers, thus a certain gloomy Danish prince’s name (Hamlet) gets swapped for “omelette,” but it looks like he might be onto something when he tells the surprised theater folk of the 1590s to try singing and dancing on stage.
“He can view into the future to see what’s coming. Nick Bottom asks Nostradamus to look into what the future of theater will be, and Nostradamus finds out that it’s going to be musicals, so that leads into the great number, ‘A Musical,'” said Pacifica actor William Rhea, who plays the seer.
No one in the 16th century knows what a musical is, but the show must go on as they figure it out.
Of course, every musical also needs a good romance, and that’s where Nigel and Puritan ingenue Portia cross paths.
Mia Faillace, who’s from Burlingame, describes the character, whose father is a preacher, as “a hopeless romantic” and “very sheltered.”
Meanwhile, the Bottom brothers’ professional rival is one of the biggest ever names in showbiz, but even so, he doesn’t have his act together as much as it seems.
Alexander Reyes, from Cupertino, plays Shakespeare, who, while loving the rockstar attention he gets from everyone, is secretly insecure because he also knows that it’s a fickle business.
“Deep down, he does have good intentions, but at the same time he understands how difficult it is to be a writer. So that’s why he acts (like) ‘Oh, I’m the best. No one can touch me,'” he said.
Fittingly, this Bard tap dances, something that Reyes said was a challenge for him in working on the show, noting tap-dancing proved to be a good workout.
“I’m doing very much technical things. I’m doing technical moves that I would have otherwise not learned if it weren’t for this show,” he said.
The scope of the show is demanding and also exciting, the actors said. “Something Rotten” may have a silly tone, but the Woodside Musical Theatre cast took the work to heart.
“It’s such a beast of a show — there’s so much to be looking at at all times. There’s so much choreo. There’s so much singing, and putting it all together in such a short amount of time definitely has been the most challenging, but the most rewarding,” Faillace said.
“I honestly just think it’s rarer nowadays to be able to work with such a big cast, especially in community theater spaces, the fact that this cast has all worked so hard together,” Rhea said. “Even in the off times, people are off practicing different bits of choreography or refreshing lines or doing stuff. Everyone really, really wants the show to succeed, and you can feel that in the way that they bring that energy to the room.”
Things may not have unfolded in the theater world exactly as this Nostradamus predicted, but “Something Rotten” seems to have nailed a very important role that a musical comedy can play in the world.
“I think we’re in such an interesting time in our country and in our world, and so (audiences can) bring away some joy, getting to step away from all of that for two and a half hours, and really just bask in the fun and the joy that our company brings,” Faillace said.
“Something Rotten” runs through Oct. 17 at Woodside Performing Arts Center, 199 Churchill Ave., Woodside; $28-$55; woodsidetheatre.com.
