Seussical, The Musical

If you’ve ever (re)watched the inexplicable, cheeseball film version of Clue simply because Madeline Kahn is brilliant as Mrs. White, you’ll understand the many guilty pleasures of Chicago Shakespeare’s Seussical, the Musical. This notorious family mega-entertainment that attempts—desperately—to cobble together about a half a dozen Seuss books still runs like a jalopy with plutonium in its tank. (Even at a mercifully shortened 70 minutes, it can still grind you down.)

Yet the small victory here is that director Rosen and his ridiculously talented ensemble can see the flaw that even a team of the world’s finest theatrical surgeons weren’t able to fix in this show’s infamously extended development process. Like many Broadway musicals of late, the gold mine–intentioned Seussical is chillingly satisfied merely to remind us of fond childhood memories, but feels no obligation to create new ones.

Screw replicating the wisdom-cum-whimsy of Seuss’s unparalleled world; repeated attempts on film and stage have shown it can’t be done anyway. This cast knows that it’s better to rely on its own creations. So instead of the last can of Who Hash, we get Butler’s ever-morphing comic Cat in the Hat (thankfully more Cheshire than cheeky); Billings’s wicked, vainglorious stripteuse Mayzie La Bird (Mama Rose on a wire); and priceless McClendon, whose sparkling, ugly-duckling turn as Gertrude McFuzz is one for the record books. The show will always be as obnoxious as a joy buzzer, but if I were you, I’d take your kids now, while it has actual human beings in it. That way they’ll remember it later.—Christopher Piatt