Saturday, July 7Fuckboys: The Musical at Luisa’s Cellar
File this one under “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Between the vulgar title and an unintelligible teaser performance, I wasn’t exactly eager to see Fuckboys: The Musical in its Fringe run earlier this summer. But writer/co-director Savannah Pedersen’s show turned out to be a surprisingly tender and tuneful tribute to female friendship – and if you missed it, here’s a second-chance encore performance. In this millennial answer to Sex and the City, four 20-something women hang out at happy hour in a karaoke bar that “smells like cigarettes and broken dreams,” complaining about the pain of dating in 2018, when love poetry has been replaced by eggplant emojis. The show maintains a snappy pace while walking a tonal tightrope between self-aware satire and honest sentiment, and Pedersen’s original score features a couple of big ballads that are Broadway-worthy. The misandrist title is really just a lurid hook; look past it and you’ll find a warm, human story that will leave you humming.
