Big Bang, The

Put down the paper and read this review later -- after you've called Theater Three to reserve a seat for the funniest frenetic frivolity you're likely to see for a long time. The Big Bang, by Boyd Graham and Jed Feuer, opened in the intimate downstairs space Monday night for a limited run.
 
It is a rollicking musical about the history of the world from Adam and Eve until the present. First presented in 1997 at the Durham Arts Council with Graham and Feuer playing themselves, it went on to play off-Broadway. The back story is that two producers, Boyd and Jed, have borrowed the Park Avenue apartment of Sid and Sylvia Lipbalm who are away on vacation.  Boyd and Jed have invited prospective backers -- the audience -- to experience sketches from the most expensive Broadway musical ever written, with a budget of $83M.
T3 artistic director Jac Alder's elaborate and whimsical set design is worth getting to the theater early just to take it all in, because once the action begins, you'll hardly have time to notice the details.  Each set piece becomes an "improvised" prop to be utilized by K. Doug Miller and Gary Floyd as they portray such historical luminaries as Adam and Eve, Julius Caesar, Mahatma Gandhi's mother, Napoleon, Attila the Hun, and a host of others as they are accompanied on the piano by director/narrator Terry Dobson.

In an early show-stopping number Adam and Eve extol the virtues of a pre-snake Eden in "Free Food and Full Frontal Nudity." (And no, they're not.) 

Another among a gazillion laugh getters is Caesar (Miller) receiving a visit from a lisping soothsayer (Floyd) telling him, "Wake up, Caesar and smell the manicotti; wake up Caesar; they have a plot."

One-upping this bit is a hilarious shtick about the birth of Christianity in which Mary (yes, that Mary) laments to Mrs. Gandhi: "After the loaves and fishes; guess who did the dishes?" And Mrs. Gandhi kvetching, "My son eats only bread and water; that's why I wish I had a daughter." 

Oh, I forgot to mention the play is chockfull of anachronisms and references to future pop culture icons and events.

Floyd (as Boyd) singing plaintively to his last potato as he looks into its "eyes" at the height of Ireland's potato famine is laugh-out-loud funny.

 Doug Miller is a hoot as Queen Isabella with "her" fractured English, but I won't give away the punch line.
Another riotous sketch has Minnehaha and Pocahontas cruising for braves in the Lobby Bar of the Algonquin Hotel. And not to be missed is Eva Braun's (Miller) realization that "Loving Him is Where I Went Wrong."
For 75 non-stop minutes of frenetic folderol don't miss The Big Bang at Theater Three.