David Kronke: Bukowsical!: Vileness Made Cuddly
Charles Bukowski, the poet laureate of raging drunks and the otherwise reprehensible, has finally been tamed. “Bukowsical!�, a new musical being offered by the Sacred Fools Theatre Company in Hollywood, offers up the cheeky spectacle of his biography rethought as a feel-good musical.
Conceived and co-written by TV comedy writer Spencer Green and composer Gary Stockdale (full disclosure: I’m on friendly terms with Stockdale, who received an Emmy nomination for his title theme for Showtime’s “Penn & Teller: Bulls#!t!�), Bukowski’s sordid saga has been transformed into a parody of the rags-to-riches sort of biofodder with which anyone with a passing relationship with popular culture is familiar. The joke, of course, is only the most wrong-headed would consider Bukowski’s life worthy of such treatment. (The seedy Mickey Rourke-Faye Dunaway film "Barfly," referenced in the musical, was based on Bukowski's life.)
The result is not unlike the Tony-winning “Urinetown,� in which wildly poor taste is transformed into something not just palatable but even kind of cute. David Lawrence plays Buk (rhymes, appropriately enough, with “puke�) as a put-upon doofus whose life only begins to turn around when he confronts Sweet Lady Booze (Christina Byron in a costume suggesting A.A. Kabuki). One of the funniest songs is, of course, the love song – “Chaser of My Heart,� in which Buk and his True Love (Fleur Phillips) exchange moony glances and shots simultaneously. Ah, young love.
“Bukowsical!� is unrepentantly silly and frequently funny and, at just an hour in length, the perfect theatrical experience for those with short attention spans. It'll be presented Fridays at 11 p.m. at Sacred Fools through (at least) May.
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