Theater review
If you’re going to create a fake jukebox musical about a fake legendary folk duo, you better be able to write real songs — ones that can convincingly sell the existence of an extensive back catalog of catchy tunes. On that count, score one for the creators of “We Ain’t Ever Gonna Break Up,” on stage at Village Theatre in Issaquah through June 21 and in Everett June 27-July 19.
Writers/performers Gregg Hammer and Louis Pardo developed the show with director Scott Weinstein, workshopping it at Village’s 2024 Festival of New Musicals before premiering it at Phoenix Theatre in Arizona that year. Telling the story of arrogant frontman Saul Hymon (Hammer) and his diffident sidekick Bart Parfunkel (Pardo), the show returns to Village exhibiting qualities of both its characters. In some scenes, it confidently strides toward the punchline, while others find it assembling a bunch of wacky elements, hoping for something to coalesce.
There’s no question that Hammer and Pardo have dialed in these characters. Hammer’s imperious Hymon conceals his naked ambition beneath a rigidly cheerful facade while Pardo’s Parfunkel is a full-body showman, making up for his apparent lack of musical ability with sheer kinetic energy. An early introduction: “Welcome to the stage, Saul Hymon on the guitar and Bart Parfunkel on … the nothing!” (He does earn the right to play the spoons later.)
As writers, their output droops. Hammer and Pardo give the show a halfhearted self-reflexive gloss, with the present-day Hymon and Parfunkel telling the audience they’re going to walk through their history via musical comedy.
The resulting show loosely maps the duo’s trajectory onto the tumultuous relationship of obvious analogues Simon & Garfunkel, tracking them from teenage bonding as talented outcasts to meteoric success as writers of harmony-drenched folk anthems to discord and disrepair as Hymon lusts for solo fame, fueled by a series of inadvertent betrayals by his buddy. In these episodes, the show leans into the ridiculous. Paul Simon should count himself lucky Art Garfunkel never got him sent to Vietnam in an Army theme-song contest mix-up.
Hammer and Pardo’s score blends pastiche and parody, though it’s better at the former, evoking the Simon & Garfunkel sound in genuinely enjoyable numbers that capture its bouncy charm (“See Ya, Mia”) or earnest yearning (“San Francisco”). And Hammer and Pardo’s harmonies are no joke — they blend beautifully.
The more overt parodies of Simon & Garfunkel songs (or Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond ones) tend to land with an obvious thud. (“There will never be a hit song about spices and renaissance fairs,” Hymon says.)
Overexplanation recurs throughout the show, which acknowledges its own tendencies with a gag about all the exposition, and then repeats the joke a scene later. The winking to the audience grows labored in “We Ain’t Ever Gonna Break Up,” which takes a sketch-comedy approach to its grab bag of gags: Hit the joke hard repeatedly, then move on. But those harmonies — they make breaking up hard to do.
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