Ohio University and Athens helped to create the next “h!t” musical with the company of Broadway’s Next H!T Musical, the final show of the Performing Arts and Concert Series.
Broadway has found its next hit musical: On the Highwire.
On the Highwire “won” Saturday night’s Phony Awards, hosted by the company of Broadway’s Next H!T Musical. The musical improv show was the final act of this academic year’s Performing Arts and Concert Series.
In the show, company members parody the Tony Awards and present their nominated songs, which come from audience suggestions. The actor takes that scene and creates, on the spot, what musical that song came from. After all four performers sang their song, the audience votes on which number will receive a full musical production in the second act.
“This was fabulous,” said Kathy Guzy, who was there with her family. “How they can just think of things off the top of their head like that and make up songs and just to do all that. It was amazing.”
Her sister Alicia Ciliberto said she would “definitely recommend” the show to anyone.
The fun started right from the beginning, Guzy said, as the emcee Robb Coles “really did his research” for all of his local-aimed jokes. It took about one minute for him to make a Miami University joke, which kicked off the laughter-filled evening.
Guzy and her family said they particularly enjoyed Coles’ joke about bats being in Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium, though Coles said they “wouldn’t move the show or anything,” bringing a roar of laughter from the audience.
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It was Becca L. McLarty’s improvisation of “My Lovely Giraffe” from On the Highwire, a circus murder mystery musical, that won the big award. It was probably due to Robert Z. Grant’s performance as the giraffe, in which the already-tall actor used two chairs as “prosthetics” to simulate the animal’s height. When fellow performer Rob Schiffmann, who is also co-artistic director of Broadway’s Next H!T Musical, encouraged him to cross the stage. It was an uproar as Grant scooted himself and the chairs across the entire length of the stage.
“Oh the giraffe, for sure,” Anne Sternberger, a first-year graduate student studying plant biology, said of her favorite moment in the show.
Guzy’s sister Carla Oprea, who went to the show with her son Matt, a sophomore studying finance, said she loved when Grant played Big Top, pronounced like big toe with a French accent.
Sternberger’s mother Susan commended the pianist Gary Adler and the company for how quickly they all picked up on one another. Just as the company members improvised all of the dialogue and lyrics, Adler improvised the entire score of On the Highwire, which included an overture, and the music for all of the other suggestions.
The adoration was felt on both sides as Katie Hammond, a company member, praised the energy of the Athens crowd.
“The show ran a little long but we didn’t care because we were having fun and you were having fun,” she said. “We loved being here. It was such a great crowd and such a great space.”
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