Jessie Ballard and Kiely Sugayan are quick to point out, at the start of January 6th – The Musical, that theirs is not the story of the alt-right insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol building. It is also, unfortunately, not really a musical. That’s a shame, because such songs as there are (composed by Jack Ballard and Kitty Richardson) are catchy, funny and sweet, and the show would benefit from more of them.
Playing themselves as best friends and self-described “Brooklyn queers”, Jessie and Kiely share a 6 January birthday, which gets disrupted when they find themselves thrown in jail for being in the wrong place at the wrong time to cosplay Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, for reasons that never really get satisfactorily explained.
In place of a full score, what the piece offers instead is lots of goofy silliness that doesn’t always quite make sense, either in terms of content or structure (a “rewind” scene. Why?), smoothed over by its extremely likeable protagonists, as they keep trying to explain that they were only in Washington, DC, because they were trying to break into its theatre scene, which is well known for being a feeder for Broadway. They’re intersectionists, you see, not insurrectionists.
The friendship between fretful and meticulous Kiely and the more bolshy Jessie can feel a bit like fan fiction of the Broad City series created by fellow Brooklyn habitués Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, but it’s well drawn. Their chemistry is authentic, and their brief sketches of other characters, from cops to journalists to Patti LuPone, are solidly comic. It’s the briefer gags, like the jabs at acting classes and Broadway tropes, and the throwaway lines that work best. More extended scenes, such as a Two Ronnies-esque verbal collision of scenes, are most notable for their missed opportunities, and a couple of sequences involving a puppet add little.
At times, the show teeters on the brink of making more serious points about alt-right politics in the US and the vexations of the for-profit healthcare industry, but pulls back in every instance. That’s a shame, because this quasi-musical could really soar as the more pointed and coherent satire it seems hesitant and equivocal about embracing.
In its current form, January 6th – The Musical is a slight but entertaining manic caper, which is perhaps enough for a Fringe debut. Sugayan and Ballard are impressively versatile actors and singers, and it somehow feels as though they’re underused in their own show. For a duo with big dreams and the amply demonstrated potential to realise them, that isn’t necessarily a bad place to begin.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
