Kamyar Pazandeh and Jyla Robinson (Photo by Emily Cooper)

Much to my surprise, Something Rotten! is very entertaining.

I went in wary. I’d never heard of the show and all I knew about the plot was that somebody in Elizabethan England invents musical theatre. Okay, I thought, we’ll see …

But then I got there, and I fell into a kind of quicksand of hilarity. There was no getting out.

Here’s a more complete set-up: yes, we’re in Elizabethan England and a struggling playwright named Nick Bottom has to come up with some fresh ideas or his patron will cut him off. Unlike William Shakespeare, who’s getting all the attention, Nick is not a fountain of literary genius, so he consults a soothsayer, a distant relative of Nostradamus. This lesser-known Nostradamus tips Nick off that musicals will be big in the future and, when Nick is looking for a plot for his musical and asks Nostradamus what the Bard’s biggest hit will be, the soothsayer replies “Omelette” — just missing Hamlet by that much. [Read more…]