NYMF plans for the overly ambitious

http://www.nymf.org

As I am fantastically (purposely) unemployed this summer, I can finally gorge myself on shows at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. The shows seem to range from fetal to adolescent and awful to awesome. It's a very exciting gamble.

At NYMF 2011, I endured Fucking Hipsters! because I love Heather Robb of the band The Spring Standards. She was charming and sounded lovely, as usual, but the show was a mess and not really much fun. At NYMF 2010, Shine! really impressed me. It was a well-developed, full-scale musical (with a huge cast for such a small space) based on Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick stories and set in 1876. The staging was minimal and resourceful, reminding me a bit of Peter and the Starcatcher in that way. And Andy Mientus was really good.

So for NYMF 2012, I am cramming in as many shows as I can while I'm in town. Unfortunately, the scheduling means I'll miss one of the productions I was most looking forward to, Re-Animator The Musical (there's some punctuation missing in that title, no?).

Other shows that look promising but don't fit my calendar: Rio (set in a Brazilian favela), Stuck (strangers on public transportation), and Sidekicks! (about superheroes' lesser halves, starring Alex Brightman, recently of Nobody Loves You at San Diego's Old Globe, which it crushed me to miss).

In happier news, I have tickets to all the shows below. Please cross your fingers for me that the timing works out so that I can get to them all on time (and that I can crash the opening night party and Part of It All a bit late).

In chronological order:

* Himself and Nora (about James Joyce and Nora Barnacle)

* Happy Endings (a New Yorker inherits an independent bookstore in a small New England town)

* A Letter to Harvey Milk (as stated on tin?)

* Shelter (about a counselor at a Philadelphia women's shelter)

* Part of It All (work from new composers, lyricists, and performers)

* Zelda (about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald)

* Prisoner Dancer (Filipino maximum-security prisoners in a dance-based rehabilitation program)

* ZAPATA! (Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata steps out of the past to show a member of Occupy Wall Street how to fight for the 99%)

* Le Cabaret Grimm (punk cabaret)

* Stand Tall (a David and Goliath story ... with a Guitar Hero battle--and with the not-particularly-tall Gerard Canonico, of Spring Awakening and American Idiot, as Goliath)

* Swing State (click the link to read the description--I'm worried about the rampant stereotyping that will probably be included)