[NEohioPAL] Review of "Cannibal! The Musical" at Blank Canvas Theatre

[Bob Abelman]

‘Cannibal!’ at Blank Canvas not for thin-skinned theatergoers



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, American Theatre Critics Association



Picasso painted “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” at the age of 26. Dalí completed “The Persistence of Memory” by 27. Michelangelo unveiled a completed “David” when 29. 



So it is tempting to expect more from 24-year-old Trey Parker’s “Cannibal! The Musical,” since he would later go on to write the Tony Award-winning “The Book of Mormon.”  



But “Cannibal!” – ever-so loosely based on the true story of a 1870’s Gold Rush travel guide who left his clients dead and partially consumed in the Colorado Territory – is no early masterpiece.  It has all of “Mormon’s” distinctively sophomoric humor, sacrilege and political incorrectness but none of the astute satire, tuneful songs and endearing characters that made that show so hugely entertaining. 



To borrow the key lyric from “Cannibal’s!” second song, the show is “stupid.”  As evidence, its opening song – a Rodgers and Hammerstein parody titled “It’s A Shpadoinkle Day” – compares life to a baked potato.



Other songs are merely serviceable, which grows tiresome.  Nearly every scene ends with an abrupt blackout, which lacks imagination. And characters are broadly and badly drawn, not unlike the acerbic, animated “South Park” TV series that Parker would create four years later.



As “South Park” demonstrated, stupid can be great fun when the intentionally low-budget aesthetics, blatant irreverence and gross out humor are embraced, which the production of “Cannibal!” at Blank Canvas Theatre does.  



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/
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