Altar Boyz

February 17th, 2007
The Wadsworth, Westwood
Musical

Ok. Wasn't sure what to expect. We really enjoyed it!
The plot: a Christian Boy Band's Soul-Saving Tour across the country. And I have to say, true to the genre, there was plenty of gay subtext and asides in the show, which I didn't expect because of the so-called Christian element of the show. This made it all the more tongue-in-cheek hilarious. The characters represented every boy-band archetype: the bad boy, the charismatic front-man (boy?), the gay one, the Hispanic one and, in this show, the Jewish one (funny!).

The show is actually not that religious and is more an example of how badly shoe-horned into the straight-laced Christian ideology a boyband would be. It's a parody of both. The plot is snappy, and the show books at a song-packed 90 minutes filled with puns and asides, laugh-out-loud choreography and lyrics ~ and in my opinion, very catchy songs with crisp 4-part harmony.

You may not love the musical genre (boyband pop), but if you go see this and wind up bored, there's truly no hope for your soul (wink to those who've seen the show).

Cast: Austin Lesch (Matthew), Joey Khoury (Mark), Jesse JP Johnson (Luke), Jay Garcia (Juan), and Nick Blaemire (Abraham). This is one of those instances when the tour cast is actually much better than the original cast. Rare, but it happens.