Parodying Covid-19 Through Musicals
Aaron Netsky
Over the decades, since the release of his first feature film, The Producers, in 1967, Mel Brooks has often been asked why he would do what he does in that movie, make Hitler funny. He has always responded with some version of what he told NPR in April, 2018: “That’s my job: to make terrible things entertaining.”
Right now, our terrible things are myriad, but the terrible thing that is center stage is Covid-19. And it is truly terrible: more and more people are diagnosed with it every day, more and more people die of it every day, and both of those statistics are slowing or speeding up, it seems, depending on when you’re watching the news. At the same time, so many of our distractions are off-limits to us, including live theatre. We can stream and we can read and, if we’re careful, we can go for a walk. But none of that necessarily touches the reality that we go back to when we emerge. Parody can. Emulating Mel Brooks has been one of my respites, and I would encourage everyone, rather than trying not to think about Covid-19, to try to make it entertaining, to laugh at it. To do this, use musicals.
Ask the person I live with and she will tell you: parodying musicals is not something I just started doing with self-isolation. It’s not like I suddenly cracked from not being able to go outside. I’ll do it any time, any place: humorously apply a situation to an existing showtune. The vast majority of my parodies vanish with the moment in which they are born. As quarantine season approached, however, I was already in the habit of writing them down regularly, my way of leavening another frustrating situation: the overstuffed Democratic presidential primary. As the first voting in Iowa approached, I could not help singing to myself about the “Iowa Tiger,” the initial motivating force of all presidential candidates, to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger,” which, as of 2012, is technically a showtune. “It’s the Iowa Tiger, it’s the first major fight/ Brings the worst out of Democratic rivals/ Then it’s on to New Hampshire, which is equally white/ But it makes much more sense than the Iowa Tiger.” Of course, when the results went funny, I had to parody “Trouble” from The Music Man. I covered every primary day, usually multiple states, up until the most recent one, when Covid-19 first started to infect my lyrics. I was already going to use “Ohio” from Wonderful Town, and when the primary in that state was postponed at the last minute, the song became, in part, about the people in Illinois, Arizona, and Florida wondering if it was safe for them to be voting. “Why oh why oh why oh?/ Why aren’t they voting in Ohio?/ We still have to go/ In Phoenix, Chicago,/ When I thought we had to stay home?”
Of course, I’m not the only one who does this. Parodying musicals is nothing new, from Forbidden Broadway to just about everybody on YouTube. My personal favorite from the recent Covid-19 influx of such parodies is Susan Egan, Laura Osnes, and Courtney Reed’s performance of “Keep Your Distance,” Ken Davenport and Amanda Yesnowitz’s sharp parody of “Go the Distance,” from Hercules, in the spirit of the Broadway Princess Party. “We’ll be there someday/ For now, just keep your distance/ Like, a mile away, or maybe five or ten/ And I’m gonna tell if you hoard Purell/ Better keep your distance until, well, I don’t know when.” Such brilliance is what can happen when people are left alone with their imaginations and encyclopedic knowledge of musical theatre, which I’m sure is the case of many of the people reading this. A few nights ago, while watching a fun but inferior musical movie I won’t name, one of my favorite older showtunes popped into my head, “Those Were the Good Old Days,” which the Devil sings in act two of Damn Yankees, gleefully recounting the horrors of history to make himself feel better. I added my own verse: “I found Donald’s election/ A very nice distraction/ I thought that he had peaked with that dumb catchphrase/ But the world’s quarantine/ Thanks to Covid-19/ Yeahahaha, those were the good old days.”
If the idea of making fun of the pandemic makes you feel ill, then, by all means, don’t, but if you think it will help keep you sane, let me give you a few prompts. How about a #StaytheFHome version of “When You Got It, Flaunt It” from the musical adaptation of The Producers? “My Shot,” from Hamilton, but make it about how difficult it is to shop. A version of “Shy” from Once Upon a Mattress from the point of view of an introvert who is celebrating having an excuse to not go anywhere. Anything about the Phantom of the Opera’s mask. “Masquerade/ Covid-19’s on parade/ Masquerade/ Shield your face so the world will not infect you.” Don’t worry about if it scans exactly or the rhymes are perfect, just make it funny. Shortly after Broadway and theatres across the country shut down, playwright Sarah Ruhl took to the New York Times to encourage people who wouldn’t be able to perform in or attend the shows they’d been looking forward to to stay home and write poems, like William Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker did when a plague interrupted their theatre lives. That’s kind of what I’m doing, but instead of Shakespeare and Dekker, think Gerard Alessandrini and “Weird Al” Yankovic.
Aaron Netsky (@AaronNetsky on Twitter, @aaron_netsky on Instagram) is a singer, writer, actor, and all-around theatre professional who has worked off and off-off Broadway and had writing published on AtlasObscura.com, TheHumanist.com, Slate.com, StageLightMagazine.com, and ThoughtCatalog.com, as well as his own blogs, Cantonaut (http://cantonaut.blogspot.com) and 366 Musicals (https://366days366musicals.tumblr.com), and his Medium account. Last year, his first play, "Museum of the Offensive," received a reading at the New Circle Theatre Company.
Photo: The cast of "The Producers" at Mercury Theater Chicago.(Brett Beiner)