Monogamy! Big Pharma! & Subversive Music! Don't Forget the Ukuleles!
The [2008 UkeFest], a four day-long homage to the cigar box-sized stringed instrument – starts next Thursday at the [Theater for the New City](http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net/). If youre not fully prepared to immerse yourself in ukulele culture, futuristic musical Sex!Drugs! & Ukuleles! offers a small introduction.
The show is set against the backdrop of a pharmacological dystopia in which The Corporation mandates people take drugs for ailments like sexual desire and the Love Police hunt down illegal monogamous lovers.
The plot, written by the UkeFests founder, Uke Jackson, revolves around a trio of three ukulele players who practice their subversive craft in an empty warehouse where a drug evader discovers them and encourages them to try out for the American Idol-esque Top 10.
If the plot feels oddly familiar, the show admits to lifting themes from Fahrenheit 451 and The Idolmaker. Its band of underground musicians could have been at home in the setting for V for Vendetta, 1984 or Brave New World, too.
The mash-up commentary on our overmedicated culture, corporate dominance and ignorance of love and ard is a big mandate for the play. Lines like If this aint love, Jesse James was a girl and Chemical emancipation – thats the new gyration punctuate its songs with a goofiness that relieves some of that burden.
Still, the playful strumming and the endearing innocence of the characters, who dub sex with a loved one monogomation, left a mostly optimistic feeling
And damned if I wasnt whistling the kitschy, plucky refrain on my way out of the theater.
take a blue bit of sky, put it in your pocket...
Sex! Drugs! & Ukuleles! runs through April 6th at The Theater for the New City 155 First Ave (at E. 10th St.), 212-352-3101