Village Theatre<\/a> in Issaquah through June 21 and in Everett June 27-July 19.<\/p>\nWriters\/performers Gregg Hammer and Louis Pardo developed the show with director Scott Weinstein, workshopping it at Village\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no question that Hammer and Pardo have dialed in these characters. Hammer\u2019s imperious Hymon conceals his naked ambition beneath a rigidly cheerful facade while Pardo\u2019s Parfunkel is a full-body showman, making up for his apparent lack of musical ability with sheer kinetic energy. An early introduction: \u201cWelcome to the stage, Saul Hymon on the guitar and Bart Parfunkel on \u2026 the nothing!\u201d (He does earn the right to play the spoons later.)<\/p>\n
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\u2019re going to walk through their history via musical comedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The resulting show loosely maps the duo\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Hammer and Pardo\u2019s score blends pastiche and parody, though it\u2019s better at the former, evoking the Simon & Garfunkel sound in genuinely enjoyable numbers that capture its bouncy charm (\u201cSee Ya, Mia\u201d) or earnest yearning (\u201cSan Francisco\u201d). And Hammer and Pardo\u2019s harmonies are no joke \u2014 they blend beautifully.<\/p>\n
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. (\u201cThere will never be a hit song about spices and renaissance fairs,\u201d Hymon says.)<\/p>\n
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 \u201cWe Ain\u2019t Ever Gonna Break Up,\u201d which takes a sketch-comedy approach to its grab bag of gags: Hit the joke hard repeatedly, then move on. But those harmonies \u2014 they make breaking up hard to do.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Theater review If you\u2019re going to create a fake jukebox musical about a fake legendary folk duo, you better be able to write real songs \u2014 ones that can convincingly sell the existence of an extensive back catalog of catchy tunes. On that count, score one for the creators of \u201cWe Ain\u2019t Ever Gonna Break […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2440939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2440938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/A-new-Simon-Garfunkel-inspired-musical-hits-Village-Theatre.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2440938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2440940,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440938\/revisions\/2440940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2440939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2440938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2440938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2440938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}