Once in a blue moon comes a show so laughably bad, it’s almost enjoyable — almost.
Enter “The Anthem.” Loosely based on Ayn Rand’s 1938 sci-fi novella “Anthem,” this inept musical stars Randy Jones (the original cowboy from Village People) and has been staged like a cross between “Starlight Express” and Cirque du Cheeseball.
Set in a totalitarian future that looks just like a 1980s music video, the show follows the political awakening of hunky Prometheus (Jason Gotay) as he rejects a society that proclaims “the folly of independent thought” — a typical Randian line woodenly delivered by Jones’ cartoonish Tiberius, in full silent-movie-villain mode.
This seems ripe for spoofing, but director Rachel Klein and her team — book writer Gary Morgenstein, composer Jonnie Rockwell and lyricist Erik Ransom — have no satirical edge, and the message appears to be taken seriously. Or as seriously as it can be in a show loaded with silver lamé.
Laughs abound, but they’re unintentional. A muscular Executioner in leather hot pants (Jamyl Dobson) emotes “The Palace of Mating” with a porny wacka-wacka guitar riff in the background. In their inadvertently hilarious duet, Prometheus and feisty rebel Athena (Ashley Kate Adams) warble “On the precipice of danger/I stand before a stranger/And I feel born anew/Stimulated past all rationality/How can I face reality.”
And so it goes for almost 2½ punishing hours — for a 128-page book! Let’s pray these guys don’t tackle “Atlas Shrugged” next.