stage dive

*ock of Ages and Spider-Man: Turn off the D***: How Other Shows Could Use Asterisks

Perchance you’ve noticed The Motherf**ker With the Hat. You’ve probably seen the hotly anticipated show’s modest posters online, complete with fig-leaf asterisks, or hanging outside the Schoenfeld. Thanks to cult playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis’s profane debut on the Great White Way, Broadway is quietly having its own $h*! My Dad Says moment, and the silence is deafening. Where’s the ginned-up hubbub we usually enjoy when a “wirty dord” — even one studded with capitulating “bleeps” — appears in the American public square? Does the Catholic League’s William Donahue not even bother going to shows anymore? Is the Family Research Council generally steering clear of 45th Street? (This certainly bodes ill for Trey Parker and Matt Stone: Even if The Book of Mormon were retitled A**es of Fire, it might fail to shock.)

Then again, maybe all Broadway shows ought to show a little asterisk. It’d certainly spice up the Disneyfied Times Square — especially for people with lots of repression and an inability to accurately count asterisks. Consider, if you will, the p****-bilities.*

The P****** of the Opera

*ock of Ages

How to ****eed in Business Without Really ******

Spider-Man: Turn off the D***

The Importance of B**** Earnest

***** Me if You Can

Master **ass

Dri**** Miss Daisy

The Merchant of V*****

Rain: A Tribute to the B******

*** Horse

That Championship S*****

Million Dollar Qu*****

La C*** aux F****s

The A***** F*****

Sister Act

******** (Lombardi)

*Yes, that’s right: I said “pussybilities.” Look it up.

*ock of Ages and Spider-Man: Turn off the D***: How Other Shows Could Use Asterisks