![]() “My background’s in improv and sketch comedy,” he tells me. “We were listening to these, like, desperate dreamers on tapes,” Brown says, “but we were also two mildly crazy people living in a very hot apartment in an outer borough.”Īlex Timbers, who directs the Broadway production, also helmed Gutenberg! at 59E59. “And because they had to perform these songs, they would be full-out-like, with so much enthusiasm, so much energy.” To be sure, King and Brown (who had recently started at Entertainment Weekly) were hardly establishment figures themselves in fact, they had a lot more in common with the faceless slush pile people than not. “I got obsessed with the idea of people creating musicals in a vacuum somewhere else, with the dreams of coming to Broadway,” King says. It was utterly illuminating, not only to see the kinds of (strange, bad) things that writers and composers hoped would someday be produced but also to hear the deadly serious passion behind each fledgling show. In 1999, when Brown and King were in their 20s and sharing an apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, King worked at the Manhattan Theatre Club, where he was charged with going through unsolicited demo recordings and attending readings of new musicals. “And I say that in the most genuine way possible.” ![]() “It allows us to be our truest idiots,” Gad says. ![]() Those who know The Book of Mormon, or even just Rannells’s spirited performance at the 2011 Tony Awards, will know what I mean when I say that Gutenberg! has big “I Believe” energy. It’s just the two of them-plus their pianist, Charles-doing their level best with some empty boxes, a stack of trucker hats (each one duly labeled “Gutenberg,” “Woman,” “Drunk #1,” “Another Woman,” etc.), and their own startling commitment to the work. They have, it’s clear, not one clue what to do with a tray of metal letters or a large wooden mallet (at one point, Gad swings at Rannells’s knee like a doctor with a plexor), but that’s kind of the idea: In the show, Bud and Doug don’t have a cast, set, costumes, or a lot of historical context to work with, much less an actual printing press. “We’d be sold out!”īanter like this-and the odd belted lyric from Sweeney Todd-continues throughout the morning, as the two gamely change setups and juggle the props that will be used for their Vogue portrait. “We’d sell 10 tickets,” Rannells quips in response. “Why don’t we do the show here?” Gad asks, poking around Bowne & Co.’s charming storefront, where paper gifts and tote bags live alongside ancient printing paraphernalia. The show centers on Bud (Gad) and Doug (Rannells), two friends staging a frantic run-through of their musical about-you guessed it!-Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the movable-type printing press. ![]() itself dates back to 1775.) This month, more than a decade after starring in The Book of Mormon, the Tony-nominated actors return to Broadway in Gutenberg! The Musical!, written by Scott Brown and Anthony King. Stationers, inside the South Street Seaport Museum, where resident printers still operate machines from the 19th and early 20th centuries. ![]() Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells are inspecting the letterpress at Bowne & Co. On a warm Wednesday morning in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, as a throng of little girls and their mothers swells outside a Barbie-themed restaurant pop-up serving rainbow-sprinkle pancakes, another group has gathered in the service of very different IP. ![]()
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