San Francisco Critics Get a Look at Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me

Think Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me is a one-person show? You're wrong. It does feature its namesake, of course, but it also stars Brooks Ashmanskas, Mary Birdsong, Capathia Jenkins, Nicole Parker and pianist Marc Shaiman who conceived the show with Short and Scott Wittman and also wrote the songs with Wittman. In order to perfect this unusually constructed piece in time for its July 22 start at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in NYC, the show has a three-city pre-Broadway tour scheduled. It opened its first stop at the Curran Theater in San Francisco on May 9. Did local critics think it sparkled?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Dennis Harvey of Variety: "This hybrid evening—with elements of musical, revue, autobiography, improv, genre parody and meta-theater surrealism—is at present 75% Broadway-ready in its San Francisco tryout. That's close enough to raise confidence, though there's a wildcard element to Fame that renders safe prediction impossible. This frequently hilarious, imaginative package sometimes seems discomfitingly like the things it's satirizing… The show is best when it takes absurdist flight as a mash-up of Hellzapoppin', retro TV variety hour and riff on celebrity-culture confessionalism a la Oprah. It's weakest when the ka-boom-cha! of creaky 'Broadway blue' humor reveals Short as less hip than his irony-drenched vehicle wants us to think. Those moments are relatively few, however."

Robert Hurwitt of The San Francisco Chronicle: "Fame is a loose grab bag of showbiz lampoons tentatively connected to a story about pulling together a show about putting a show together. It's also still something of a work in progress… It's already a high-energy, generally pleasant, at times hilarious and attractively packaged production. Jess Goldstein's brightly comical costumes complement the humor of Scott Pask's cartoon sets and Chris Lee's kaleidoscopic lights. Shaiman's tongue-in-cheek onstage accompaniment is bolstered by a crack pit orchestra under the baton of Charlie Alterman."

Chad Jones of The Oakland Tribune: "Short's new Broadway-bound musical is goofy, silly, crass and crude. In other words, it's comedy heaven… This is old-school, work-your-butt-off show business, and Short is one of its last great practitioners. He sings, he dances, he flies across the stage on wires and he clowns around like Sid Caesar, the Three Stooges and Jerry Lewis all rolled up into one compact little Canadian body… Live and in person is the best way to experience Short, whose old-fashioned razzle dazzle needs a spotlight and an audience to fully spring to life. By the time Fame Becomes Me hits Broadway later this year after stops in Toronto and Chicago, it'll be in even better shape than it was here, and that's saying something because it's awfully enjoyable now. The comic engine backfires here and there, and the occasional joke sinks, but Short is the ultimate safety net. As long as he's onstage, the audience is happy."

Pat Craig of The Contra Costa Times: "The first half of the piece is a bumpy mix of towering hilarity a delightful parody of The Wizard of Oz, with a killer Judy Garland impersonation by Mary Birdsong with what appears to be nothing more than gratuitous material… But the rocket really flies in the second act, after Short has been killed by a giant snowball… The musical catches fire from there, flying across a winding road of near out-of-control comedy, which gives considerable indication of just how funny this show is going to be by the time it gets to New York."