Something Rotten is an original musical by Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell about two brothers, Nick (Rob McClure) and Nigel (Josh Grisetti), struggling to make a name for themselves in Renaissance England. But how can these two writers manage to compete with the Bard, himself, William Shakespeare (usually Adam Pascal, but his understudy, Daniel Beeman, played Shakespeare at my performance)? Naturally, the only thing that could compete with Shakespeare is a musical! The musical follows the Bottom brothers as they struggle to write a musical good enough to be better than William Shakespeare’s plays.
First things first: I love this musical. It was my favorite musical featured in the 2015 Tony Awards. I think it’s a funny, moving, well-written show with spectacular music. So this review won’t really be covering parts of the musical, rather it will deal with the performance I attended (April 8, 2017, matinee) and how that particular performance went.