Audio By Carbonatix
Altar Boyz is a hit off-Broadway musical about a fictional Catholic boy band, and it is among the most sacrilegious things I’ve ever seen. To me the sacrilege was both obvious and delightful, but some audience members seemed to feel differently. Our divergent opinions might have had something to do with format: The show is set up like a concert, with songs and between-song banter, and a faux concert seems like a pretty good cover for faux sincerity. Whatever the reason, shouts of “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” rang out through the house during the entire performance, the devout apparently oblivious to the fact that one of the actors had just asked God to sodomize him.
It’s difficult to blame the pious for their selective hearing. The show really is moving, in the flashy, exuberant manner of feel-good musical theater. If the playbill is to be believed, even one of the actors has been sold on the production’s godliness. Xander Chauncey, who plays the Boyz’ leader, Matthew, claims in his bio he’s “totally stoked to bust a move for G.O.D.” and goes out of his way to give “big ups” to his “homeboy, Jesus.” Of course, there is a good chance Chauncey is just writing in character. With a ruse like Altar Boyz, it’s hard to tell.
The show begins innocently enough with “We Are the Altar Boyz,” in which the band lays out its MO. “Now we don’t believe in hurtin’ or hatin’,” they explain, wagging fingers and shaking hips in synchrony, “cuz that’s the kind of stuff that leads to Satan!”
Then they introduce themselves — Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan (he’s Mexican), and Abraham (token Jew) — and launch into a tricky dance number called “Rhythm in Me.” The refrain is fast and smartly syncopated: God-put-the rhy-thminme, God-put-the rhy-thminme, God-put-the rhy-thminme, and so on. It’s during one of these refrains that the show’s not-strictly biblical leanings come to the fore.
At that point, observant theatergoers will already have noticed one of the Boyz seems a little less butch than the others. That would be Mark, played by Andrew Grosshandler, a vet of many Altar Boyz productions. From the moment he arrives onstage, his dancing oozes a fem, sexy lubricity that seems queerly at odds with the tent-revival-cum-pop-show ethos that the Boyz are purported to purvey. As his cohorts sing, “God-put-the rhy-thminme,” Mark sticks out his ass and implores, “Put it in me!” The less godly in the room roar with delight, and the Jesus people politely turn the other cheek.
It almost seems like a mistake, as if one night some naughty sodomite snuck into the workshop of writers Kevin Del Aguila, Gary Adler, and Michael Patrick Walker and added the lyric under cover of dark. Obviously this isn’t the case, and the contradiction is a big part of what makes Altar Boyz so fun. The flamboyantly gay Mark may ask the Good Lord to stick it in, but the show never winks. Neither the script nor the actors ever display the tiniest hint of self-consciousness, and their wide-eyed godliness, combined with the script’s various worldly subtexts, might result in even inveterate heathens being moved by the spirit.
I certainly was, and it was a bit of a surprise. Because Altar Boyz is ridiculous. This is true of all musicals to one degree or another, but Altar Boyz exalts in silliness. Before the third song, the Boyz roll out the “Soul Sensor,” a piece of cutting-edge machinery that can detect the presence of unsaved souls in the house. Early in the show, the audience is veritably teeming with the damned; according to the sensor, there are more than 300 of us with sins on our conscience. It is the Boyz’ mission to save us all. To do so, they sing about the group’s genesis (it happened in a rectory); about the universal brotherhood of Christ; about the importance of confession; about how wonderful it is to not have sex with your girlfriend (especially one you love: The song’s hook hangs on the line “There’s something about you, baby/You make me want to wait”); about the importance of coming out to your family as, you know, a Catholic; and about how much Satan sucks. They sing about a lot of other things, too, and most of the songs contain the same kind of sly, unselfconscious allusions to worldly debauchery that set the audience off in “Rhythm in Me.”
But really, it’s joy as much as mirth that gives Altar Boyz its punch. I took my mother to the show, and she was ebullient, utterly sold on the Boyz’ feel-good messages of hope and belonging, even though she understood and enjoyed their occasional blue moves. Though I am not quite so susceptible to sing-spiel sap, I too was grinning when I left the theater.
This is, in part, a musical phenomenon. The music is insidiously catchy, in the grand boy band tradition, and is given a great dynamic punch by Eric Alsford’s tight, tricky combo. The singing is mostly excellent, though the group’s frequent attempts at barbershop-style harmony are occasionally foiled by their being out of breath. But don’t worry about it: More often than not, they do well, and their individual voices are fine Broadway-belter specimens. The exception is Grosshandler, whose pipes are not so easily categorized. Whether or not he’s singing in a character voice — and I tend to think he’s not — his throat is equipped with genuinely freaky equipment, androgynous and otherworldly. The voice seems to go up and up and up without any noticeable break before hitting falsetto. For all I know, he might not even have a falsetto.
Grosshandler’s singing adds spice to what is already strong music, and between that and the earnestness of the characters, one is prepared to suspend a lot of disbelief and cynicism. I am not the kind of person who likes to tap his foot for Jesus, but I did so, and I’m not ashamed. Perhaps the writers showed their hand in the last song, “I Believe,” which contains a stirring message of togetherness and fidelity without ever once mentioning God or his alleged progeny. This is the only time one of the Boyz’ songs makes such an omission, and by then, it’s barely necessary. Though after so sweet a night, it is nice to know you and the Boyz are on the same page.
