Forward Theater’s “Gutenberg! The Musical!” is no ordinary historical biography. The show, which has an extended run until Nov. 30 at the Overture Center, is a wild and hilarious fantasy about the creation of the printing press.
Originally written by Scott Brown and Anthony King in 2005, the musical was revived on Broadway in 2023. Now, the comedic parody has made its way to Wisconsin through Madison’s premier professional theater company.
The story is centered around ambitious yet clueless playwrights Bud Davenport (Greg Pragel) and Doug Simon (Doug Clemons), who share in a fourth-wall-breaking introduction to the audience that they are on a mission to get their original musical about Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press to Broadway.
According to them, the audience is full of Broadway producers who might pick up their work of “historical fiction,” which they define as “fiction, but true.” The falsified story of the printing press’s creation is presented as a low-budget, incomplete version of the Broadway spectacle they envision their story will eventually become.
As they have not yet found someone to bring their vision to life on a Broadway stage, Bud and Doug are on their own to act out their story. There is one major obstacle in this: their musical has more than two characters.
Bud and Doug’s solution is to costume themselves with a large collection of labeled hats, which actors Pragel and Clemons skillfully and rapidly switch between throughout their performance. These hats are very cleverly designed for easy transitions during these moments with flippable labels and removed brims.
With their hats, Bud and Doug transform into the inhabitants of the German town of Schlimmer, including Gutenberg and Helvetica, his cleverly named assistant and love interest. Joining them are other citizens of Schlimmer such as a beef fat trimmer, the town drunks and the story’s primary antagonist, an evil Satan-worshipping monk simply named Monk.
Pragel and Clemens bring an impressive amount of energy and charm to Bud and Doug and a hilarious melodrama to the characters that Bud and Doug switch between.
Clemens is delightfully bubbly as Doug, keeping the energy up for the entire show and adding a sort of lovability that makes the audience truly root for them despite the outlandishness of their goal. This works beautifully alongside Pragel’s quirkiness; his masterful comedic timing and full-on dedication to the ridiculousness of the script prompt endless laughter.
As unbelievable as the story is, they interpret it with the utmost sincerity, making their story a beautiful parody and celebration of the musical as an art form.
“Gutenberg” is unique from other adaptations of history for the stage for one very simple reason: it is incorrect. It blatantly refuses to educate the audience, going out of its way to ensure historical inaccuracy. As Bud and Doug state in their introduction of the play-within-a-play, the entire story was built around a quick skim of the first Google search result of Johannes Gutenberg’s name.
The playwriting duo even makes up their own timeline of history, tossing in some intentionally irrelevant references to the Holocaust for the sake of addressing a “serious issue.”
Where other big historical pieces from Broadway like “Hamilton” worked to preserve legacies, shows like “Gutenberg” and the similarly designed “Oh, Mary!” have been taking home awards in recent years for doing the very opposite. Audiences and professionals alike have been loving the genre of oddly specific, wildly inaccurate distortions of history, and despite the utter lack of accuracy in Bud and Doug’s musical, Johannes Gutenberg’s name has never been uttered more frequently in today’s world.
Fans of Broadway musicals can spot countless references to other shows as well, from a biscuit-themed bottle dance à la “Fiddler on the Roof” to some references to popular characters portrayed by hats in a hilarious and cleverly constructed hat kickline.
One of the most exciting parts of the unique design of this show is the opportunity for a cameo from a local celebrity at every performance. The script features a small appearance from a new character during the show’s final number, which historically has been played by a friend of the actors or a public figure as a surprise. Forward Theater is bringing in a different familiar face from Madison every night to play this small, yet pivotal role in Bud and Doug’s journey.
This combined with the show’s brilliant parody style makes “Gutenberg” a true celebration of people and the art that they make. It truly fosters an appreciation for the art of musical theater, even sneaking in moments to educate the audience on theatrical writing techniques.
