Front Row Centre Review: BOYGROOVE

 The sell-out hit from last summer's Fringe festival, has made the leap to if not the big time at least the medium time at the newly christened Diesel Playhouse.  It's a smart and genuinely funny 90 minutes that chronicles the rise and fall of a popular boy band named "Boygroove."  With a name like that, you can probably guess there is a great deal of gay subtext and indeed over the course of the show one of the band members does come out, but the event is used to skewer paparazzi media, Christian reform, and obsessed teenaged fans all on one deft sequence.

 

That's typical of the speed with which BOYGROOVE moves. As directed by Kenneth Brown, the show shifts from place to place yet even on a bare stage with no props we always have a complete sense of where we are. The choreography by Kay Grigar and Melanie Piatocha is inventive, funny and entertaining all a once.

 

But all of this would be for naught were it not for the talented foursome that makes up Boygroove. This is a case where it is impossible to single out any one of the performers because all four function in perfect counterpoint playing a variety of roles. 

 

As the perpetually angry bad boy, Jon Paterson is one tightly wound spring ready to snap at any moment.  What could very easily become a monotonous one-note performance is skillfully transformed into a surprisingly likable character.

 

Billed as Lance, the gifted one, Scott Walters navigates that treacherous gay/straight wedge without ever overdoing it though there is a sense that none of his band mates should have been at all surprised at his coming out. ("I thought you were just religious!" cries one of them upon learning the news.)

 

Ironically, it is Andrew who is billed as the sensitive one. Played by Andrew Bursey, this character is perhaps the least well developed since his goal is only to do good. In fact his naiveté could become cloying if Bursey were not such a strong performer, and he serves a nice counterpart to the angry Jon, the sexually confused Lance and the group's wannabe leader Kevin.

 

As Kevin, Matt Alden plays a series of split second switches between how he perceives himself when speaking to the group and what he actually says.  It's a gem of a moment, and he has several other opportunities to shine, including a great pit playing Tom Cruise.

 

Not only do these guys play a variety of roles, they also sing and dance the marvelous pastiche songs that sound like carbon copies of songs you have heard a million times ion radio over the past 20 years, but listen to the subversive lyrics: they are frequently far more clever than the standard pop pabulum. The pastiche music and lyrics are the work of Aaron Marci who brilliantly weaves in so many elements of the various boy bands; it comes dangerously close to plagiarism. 

 

Chris Craddock's book is concise and spare, matching the staging.  Though one could quibble that BOYGROOVE is a one-joke show, these guys take that joke and milk it for all its worth.

 

 

 

BOYGROOVE plays at The Diesel Playhouse, 56 Blue Jays Way until June 4^th.  Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8 PM with a 4 PM matinee on Saturday and a 2 PM matinee on Sunday. Tickets are $20 - $36 and available at www.boygroove.com or by calling the box office at (416) 971-5656.

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