HERRINGBONE
Athaneum Theatre Company
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Interesting premise for a musical comedy. This strange little show, which had its world premiere in 1981 at Chicago’s defunct St. Nicholas Theater before opening (in rewritten form) at the off-Broadway Playwrights Horizons, tries to out-Sondheim Sondheim. With its southern-gothic darkness and wicked humor, it might have come from the pen of short-story writer Davis Grubb or cartoonist Charles Addams, or maybe the early-60s cameras of Roger Corman, William Castle, or Robert Aldrich. Indeed, Herringbone echoes Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? as an allegory of good and evil, symbolized by the combination of innocence and ruthless cunning that characterizes show biz–and the American dream of fame and fortune that George’s parents pursue on the strength of their son’s soft-shoe skills.
