Scotland, PA at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater and Little Shop of Horrors in a commercial run at the Westside Theater translate weird, dark little movies into weird dark little musicals. Both shows feature frighteningly fun, gruesome murders and spoofy scores, ribbing the music of their respective eras.
Sometimes witty and fiendishly funny, though with slow spots, Scotland, PA is derived from William Morrisette’s 2001 macabre comedy that sets Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a fast-food joint in 1975 dead-end Central Pennsylvania. Michael Mitnick’s book, based on Morrisette’s screenplay, gleefully skewers the narrowness of small-town life and the shallowness of consumer culture in Shakespearean terms. But the parallels to the Bard’s plot feel strained and repetitive at times, and the show comes across as an overextended “SNL” sketch. Adam Gwon’s score joyfully parodies the cheesy polyester tunes of the ’70s, and Lonny Price’s staging attempts to balance broadness with just the right degree of verisimilitude. Still, the show doesn’t seem to quite know what it wants to be—a flat-out comedy, a pithy satire on corporate greed, or a heartfelt tragedy on the cruelty of fate.
The confusion stymies the leads with Ryan McCartan’s Mac and Taylor Iman Jones’s Pat (Lady MacB) caught in middle between spoof and Shakespeare. Like the rest of the cast including Will Meyers’s conflicted, closeted Malcolm, Megan Lawrence’s detective version of MacDuff, and Jeb Brown’s nasty Duncan, they sport powerful vocals and admirable acting chops, but the focus isn’t clear. Only Jay Armstrong Johnson as the goofy Banko (instead of Banquo, get it?) achieves the right blend of nuttiness and pathos. In a delightfully underplayed stoner voice, Johnson nails this slacker oddball, especially in his riotous solo number, “Kick-Ass Party,” in which he details the ideal soiree for a lonely guy with weird taste and too much time on his hands.
