If you love musicals and you love comedy but you’ve got less than an hour to spare on the fourth Tuesday of every month, Upright Citizens Brigade on Sunset is the place to be for UCB’s Quick & Funny Musicals as the monthly series’ latest installment, Whole Foods: The Musical, made mirthfully, melodically clear.

Imagine that every gripe you’ve ever had about shopping organically for a whopping amount of dough (gluten-free of course) was squeezed tightly into forty-eight minutes of song and what you’ve got is Whole Foods, “a musical about excess, entitlement, and groceries for the top 1%.”

 Take for instance, the full-cast show-opener “Such A Good Person.” a reggae-rhythmed gem that celebrates the quality of shoppers that make Whole Foods their supermarket of choice. (“I’m a good person. I’m better than you. I won’t be caught dead in a Trader Joes,” proclaims one self-satisfied customer.)

What follows is a series of musical vignettes tied together by the wispiest of plots dreamed up by writers Alana Gospodnetich, Brian Glidewell, John Loos, Hanna LoPatin, Steve Szlaga, and Taylor Cox as Sample Guy (Matthew Patrick Davis) and Clipboard Person Mary Sue (Shilpa Das) find their forbidden romantic attraction opposed by Whole Foods Manager (Muriel Montgomery).

“Do What You’ve Got To Do” has Mary Sue and her fellow signature-seeker Jen (Meghan Parks) comparing their two decidedly different points of view (“You enjoy important causes. Me, I enjoy marijuana.”) until Mary Sue (banned from entering the store) and Sample Guy (stuck inside with his cashew Camembert sample tray) lock eyes and bond over their shared invisibility.

 Partiers Gospodnetich and Jacquis Neal then show up to detox after some coke-fueled partying “with the adult cast of Stranger Things,” the better to retox tomorrow in the hip-hopping “The Weekend’s When It All Goes Down.”

A couple more Whole Foods shoppers (Maddi Fraser and Jessica Reiner-Harris) discover to their horror that the last $17 eight-pack of “La Croix,” the only sparking water either of them will ever imbibe, has just been sold, after which still more shoppers declare their individuality in “Don’t Label Me.” (“I’m a vegetarian, but that doesn’t mean I don’t eat meat.” “If I say I live in monogamy, all my lovers better agree.”)

 Simune Cheney (Tess Paras) and Kai-Tai Palowski (Joseph Porter) rejoice in making the list of 30 Super-Creative Geniuses Who Are More Accomplished And Better Than You Under 30 in “30 Under 30.” (Fun fact: They’re both friends with Lena Dunham.)

Cody (Nate Clark), aka Cross Fit Bro, then reveals the secret of his impressive musculature in “My Salad is Worth More Than Gold.” (Hint: It’s leafy, green, and these days probably not made of romaine.)

And when the aforementioned Whole Foods Manager is caught munching on a bag of taboo junk food, cue the self-confession that is “Manager’s Lament.” (“I give people shopping advice that I would never use. I’m not my true self here at Whole Foods.”)

 All of the above adds up to a Quick & Funny Musical that had me alternately laughing out loud and humming along inside my head to one catchy tune after another, some of them accompanied live by keyboardist/musical director Stuart Wood, others performed to prerecorded tracks.

True, there’s nothing that could legitimately be called a production design at UCB on Sunset (no sets, only the most basic of lighting), and the venue’s only so-so acoustics can swallow the company’s less powerful voices, but many if not most are powerhouse vocalists, and under Porter’s effervescent direction, there’s not a comedic weak link among the multitalented young bunch, an eclectic mix that also includes Greg Smith, Gabe Greenspan, DarylJim Diaz, Henry Kaiser, and Marie Lively.

 Whole Foods: The Musical is produced by Kathryn Burns, Clark, and Lindsay Lefler.

Previous Quick & Funny Musicals have included Fox Newsical and Bulimia: The Musical, and if they were anywhere near as much fun as Whole Foods: The Musical, those audiences had as much fun as I did last night.

Oh, and if you need any more convincing, how about this?

At a mere $7.00 a ticket (plus a $1.50/ticket transaction fee), an hour spent at a Quick & Funny Musical costs a whole lot less than a $17 eight-pack of La Croix at Whole Foods.

Upright Citizens Brigade, 5419 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles.
https://sunset.ucbtheatre.com/

–Steven Stanley
November 27, 2018

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Upright Citizens Brigade