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‘The [Title of Show] Show’: Broadway Stars Ham It Up on YouTube

The funniest Broadway show of the season is now playing on the Internet. No, it’s not a grainy bootleg of The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein; it’s the equally awkwardly named (but fortunately much funnier) The [Title of Show] Show. A sequel of sorts to 2006’s Off Broadway inside-a-musical musical [Title of Show], The [Title of Show] Show starts with the breathless announcement that “[Title of Show] is moving to Broadway!” Followed by this less enthusiastic admission: “We don’t know how, we don’t know when, we don’t know where … three things we have to figure out.”

YouTube episodes follow the show’s creators, Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen, as they attempt to turn their cult hit into a mainstream Broadway success, but it’s all done with such goofy enthusiasm and blithe denial of the mundane realities of business that there’s never a doubt that the cast is in on the joke. Bell and Bowen spend most of their time dreaming of the fantastic success ahead of them; a recent episode has the two imagining what Broadway stars might replace them in the cast once the show’s a monster hit, which leads to a series of charming cameos from stage stars like Kelli O’Hara, Ann Harada, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Jonathan Groff. It’s like Ricky Gervais’s Extras, but for theater nerds! —Tim Cross

The [Title of Show] Show [Official site]

‘The [Title of Show] Show’: Broadway Stars Ham It Up on YouTube