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Musical conquers Queens

By Matt Windman

2:13 PM EST, December 20, 2007

Charles Mees' "Queens Boulevard (the Musical)" (Ari Mintz/Newsday)

"The condition of Queens is the condition of the world," says playwright Charles Mee. "People from lots of different places, different countries, cultures, memories values, ways of seeing things, understandings figuring out how to get from day to day with each other. There's no other place like it on earth, except for the whole earth itself."

Mee, whose work is being explored in three separate productions this year by Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre Company, has made a career out of mining other people's texts, ranging from classic Greek tragedians to online teenage bloggers, and using it as inspiration for his plays. "Iphigenia 2.0," which opened earlier in the fall, reinterpreted and updated Euripides' "Iphigenia in Aulis."

"Queens Boulevard (the musical)" is a unique combination of classical Indian dance drama, musical theater, the culture of Queens, and "The Odyssey." The plot concerns a new husband who, on his wedding day, is determined to find the perfect gift for his bride. While she waits at home, he searches for the mythical Flower of Heaven and is thrown into a series of colorful adventures on the streets of Queens.

The set, representative of what it would really be like to step off the subway and into Jackson Heights, is covered in advertisements for karaoke bars, lawyers, pubs, bathhouses, and anything else imaginable. There is even a pile of amNewYork papers on the ground. Frankly, we'd like to see copies of amNewYork show up in more musicals.

Creating a "musical" was a natural step for Mee, whose earlier works typically feature strange song and dance sequences. Here, the song styles include Bollywood, Okinawan pop, traditional Gaelic and Sri Lankan rap. Last, but not least, there is a "Dancing Queen" sing-a-long.

What "Queens Boulevard" offers is a fresh kind of anarchy not found in typical musicals. This show, in particular, is less abstract and obscure than a lot of Mee's other plays. Still, in the end, "Queens Boulevard" remains more of a collage-like exercise in multicultural theatricality than a coherent show.

Signature Theatre Company, 555 West 42nd St, 212-224-PLAY. Tues 7pm, Wed-Fri 8pm, Sat 2 & 8pm, Sun 2 & 7pm. Thru Dec 30.