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SOMETHING ROTTEN!  is about  a couple of bad eggs making an omelette (a yoke about Hamlet?).

If you didn’t think that was funny, not to worry,—the lines come so fast and furious in Something Rotten!— there’s a new one every minute.

 The Bottom brothers, jealous of Shakespeare’s success, have to come up with a play that has everything that even the Bard hasn’t thought of.    

Something Rotten! has been nominated for many awards but like the Bottom Brothers won few.   However that doesn’t stop the show.   If you really must have Tony award winning musicals,  their rousing “A Musical”  with clues given by Nostradamus as to what he sees in the future has a snippet of every one.  

Shylock wants to invest in the show—but what to call him.  There are Puritans too, and of course there has to be love scenes and in the end a courtroom to decide what to do with all these characters.  

Shakespeare is of course the rock star with  “Shakespeare in the Park” for his what else — “Will Power.”

What the show is —  positive proof that no one can lose.    Nick and Nigel Bottom might never be the star that Will Shakespeare is, but there is a new world out there waiting for musicals—where nothing rhymes.  We should have seen it coming that
where all this is going is for this troop to head to America!

That is after they learn their lesson from —who else but Shakespeare— “to thine Own Self” —be true.

Everyone is a star in this production but special kudos to the crew for the lighting which dazzled at a record breaking pace keeping up with  this high energy touring company.  The National Theatre has probably had all of those Tony award winning shows, but they never any of them so eye popping as  Something Rotten!.

The National Theatre in Washington DC until  Feb. 18, 2018.
www.thenationaldc.com




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