Last night, I went to see Public Domain: The Musical at the Actor’s Company Theater in West Hollywood. I had no idea what to expect, but I was prepared for the worst (I’ve been to shows at fringe festivals where I would have walked out in the first five minutes, except I was the only person in the audience), and I was totally wrong. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard.
The premise of the show — which runs a tight 30 minutes — is that a pair of casting agents (played by a couple of puppets) are holding auditions for the next character from the public domain to turn into a giant animation star, in the mold of Mu-Lan, Snow White, Frozen, Cinderella, Pinnocchio, etc etc etc. Five hopefuls present themselves (starting with Rosie the Riverter) and perform musical numbers making the case for them to be the next big star.
The songs are brilliantly funny, and the running gags build and build to a climax that literally had me howling with laughter — along with my wife (who hates musicals) and my 11-year-old daughter (who started out the night furious that she wasn’t going to be left at home to make Tiktok videos and was skeptical of the whole enterprise). It was the talk of the evening.
We parked about 6 minutes away, behind the legendary Pink’s hot dog stand, so we could walk back and try it something else for the first time (pretty good hot dogs) and then we tried Milk Bar’s astoundingly good cereal milk soft-serve ice-cream. It was just about the perfect evening: cheap, delicious and hilarious.
Public Domain: The Musical has four more shows: two tonight and two tomorrow. Tickets are $10. I really recommend it!
Public Domain: The Musical [Hollywood Fringe]
11 days until the preview of @PDomainMusical and we spent our Saturday night with a performance of the Princess and the Pea song at @BoomStickThtr’s superb cabaret.
The clip they posted fantastically does NOT spoil the full nature of this song and for that I am very grateful! pic.twitter.com/Sz0EtYuXWm
— Sam Pasternack (@SamPasternack) May 27, 2019
