THESE PAPER BULLETS! mixes Shakespeare with the Fab Four at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)
Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 10, $75
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org
These Paper Bullets!, Rolin Jones’s Yale Rep transport of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to swinging 1964 London, looks and sounds great. Jessica Ford’s Mary Quant-inspired Mod costumes feature polka dots, brightly colored miniskirts, and fashionable boots and shoes, while Billie Joe Armstrong’s Beatlesque songs offer a fun twist on the Fab Four’s musical style. Unfortunately, the rest of this overly silly frenetic farce is dreadfully unfunny, a Monty Python-like sketch that in this case goes on for a long, drab two hours. The Quartos — Ben (Justin Kirk), Claude (Bryan Fenkart), Balth (Lucas Papaelias), and Pedro (James Barry) — are England’s hottest band, making women swoon wherever they go. Claude has fallen for Twiggy-esque model Higgy (Ariana Venturi), the daughter of hotel owner Leo Messina (Stephen DeRosa), while Ben and fashion designer Bea (Nicole Parker) develop a kind of love-hate relationship. Everything threatens to come crumbling down when fired drummer Don Best (Adam O’Byrne), Pete’s brother, decides to exact revenge on the Quartos and their manager, Anton (Christopher Geary), with the help of reporter Boris (Andrew Musselman). Meanwhile, Scotland Yard is suspicious of the Quartos and their success, so Mr. Berry (Greg Stuhr) sends Mr. Cake (Tony Manna) and Mr. Urges (Brad Heberlee) undercover to find out what the band is really up to. The shenanigans are annoyingly detailed throughout by TV journalist Paulina Noble (Liz Wisan), including a ridiculous appearance by the queen (Geary). These Paper Bullets! is supposed to be a madcap romp melding Shakespearean iambic pentameter with the sheer glee of Richard Lester’s Beatles films, but it falls flat again and again, despite a game cast. Jackson Gay, who will be directing Much Ado About Nothing this spring at Cal Shakes, can’t make heads or tails of Jones’s nonsensical script (the two previously collaborated on The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and The Jammer, both at the Atlantic), getting a total of two chuckles out of me as the Bard and Beatles references zoom by at a groaning pace. In a nice touch, the Quartos perform such songs as “Give It All to You” and “Love Won’t Wait” on a rotating stage in the shape of a vinyl record; Green Day’s Armstrong, whose American Idiot ran on Broadway five years ago, knows his Mop Tops, but most of the rest of These Paper Bullets! shoots nothing but blanks, desperately in need of some real help.