Musical Mondays: Desperate Measures

Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and for all its faults, I do think there is something good about taking time to remember friends, family, and perhaps most broadly any one who supports you. It really lifts my heart to see people supporting those they care about as well as people being appreciative of that support. It was perhaps my favorite thing about seeing the final performance of Desperate Measures Off-Broadway last month.

Desperate Measures is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure as a musical taking play in the Old West. Measure for Measure is one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” characterized in part because of the shifting ambiguous tone between comedy and dark drama. This retelling took all real drama out to turn it into a really silly farcical piece. Sometimes this worked—I thought the occasional nod to the cheapness of the set was pretty fun. Similarly, I really enjoyed Lauren Molina’s Bella Rose, who is the prostitute designed to take the place of the nun. The absurdity of the character and Ms. Molina’s antics were probably the height of the play.

Unfortunately, the things I didn’t enjoy outnumbered the ones I did. The show was intentionally silly, but a lot of the time that didn’t feel “fun” silly but just grating. Similarly, the decision to speak in couplets as a nod to Shakespeare made the dialogue feel pretty forced. For every couplet that I found clever, there were multiple that I just rolled my eyes at or didn’t enjoy. The music, though not necessarily bad, was pretty thoroughly forgettable. I don’t think one song stuck with me even a minute or two after the songs ended. Perhaps that is the issue—the entirety of the musical felt mostly forgettable with the best parts being small laughs that didn’t happen often enough for my liking.

My favorite part of the musical actually happened after the play. While the audience of, presumably, friends and families laughed far too often, and too hard, for what I felt the show deserved and started the show with a standing ovation, it was actually Nick Wyman, who played Governor von Richterhenkenpflichtgetruber, addressing the audience that I appreciated the most. He took the rhyming couplets that I didn’t appreciate during the show and thanked the producers, the understudies, the band, and everyone else who worked on the show from the scenery to the lighting. The rest of the cast on stage was tearing up—it seems they didn’t expect this speech at least not in this way.

That’s the beauty of live theater. I didn’t particularly like this musical—and if I had seen it any other night, then I would’ve walked away with very few subsequent thoughts. However, seeing the cast in tears as Mr. Wyman thanked all of those who supported the show, I felt a twinge of happiness. Even if I didn’t like the musical very much, the creators were supported and they appreciated that support. That’s really all one can ask for.