FOR THE LOVE OF A GLOVE


Aliens from outer space give five boys from Indiana voices that will propel them to the top of the charts in For The Love Of A Glove, Julien Nitzberg’s shamelessly irreverent, gleefully filthy, 100% unauthorized look at the controversial life of a certain King Of Pop, now eliciting shocked laughs galore in downtown-adjacent Echo Park.

 Narrating our story is Thrihl-Lha (Patrick Batiste), the self-described “bad motherfucker who made Michael Jackson the world’s greatest superstar,” who along with a menagerie straight out of Lion King, the first of dozens of puppets that will appear in the show, takes us back in time and space to the Gary, Indiana home of Joseph Jackson (Pip Lilly), who finds nothing more delightful than cheating on the missus and administering corporal punishment to his sons. (“If you want to taste the joys of the American dream, you gotta hear the sweet sound of a young child being disciplined scream,” sings the Jackson patriarch.)

And since as a devout Jehovah’s Witness, Joe’s wife Katherine (Suzanne Nichols) can only leave her husband if he abuses her (but not her children), the boys (Eric B. Anthony manipulating a life-size Michael puppet in Act One, and Trècey Dory, Nichols, and understudy Sasha Urban doing the same with Jermaine, Jackie, and Tito and Marlin puppets) will just have to put up or shut up.

Then, one momentous day, a spaceship falls into Lake Michigan and the Jackson boys rescue five “strange little space people” with glowing nodules that look like five fingers on a glove, extraterrestrials who come from a “fantastically funky magically musical planet” and have the power to turn the tone-deaf Jacksons into bona fide singers.

All that the youngest Jackson has to do is put his finger in alien leader Thrihl-Lha’s mouth, let him suck his blood, and he’ll be transformed into the most talented singer on earth, and if his brothers do the same to Vikh-Tah (Andrew Ableson), Run-Saa (Daniel Mills), Sann-Dhaa (Walker), and Ayl-Aa (Terra Strong), they too will have the vocal chops to record hit after hit after hit so long as they remain virgins.

The next thing you know, the Jackson Five have arrived in Detroit and been signed by Motown president Berry Gordy (Mills), and the rest, as they say, is history, though never before recounted quite the way it is in For The Love Of A Glove, a bio-musical that makes Book Of Mormon seem as squeaky clean as The Sound of Music with songs like “Don’t Masturbate,” “Let’s Masturbate,” “What A Delight When You Turn White,” and “If I Were A Nun and You Were a Priest.”

 In other words, if any of what you’ve read so far sounds even the least bit offensive, this lascivious look at Michael and the Jacksons is probably not for you.

All others need only head over to the Carl Sagan-Ann Druyan Theater where a sensational cast throw caution (and propriety) to the wind, the better to deliver the adults-only entertainment goods.

No subject is off-limits to writer-director Nitzberg, composers Nicole Morier, Drew Erickson, and Max Townsley, choreographer Cris Judd, and music director Christopher Moscatiello, who give their nine-member ensemble abundant opportunities to show off triple-threat gifts as they bring to life character after character and puppet after puppet (including such showbiz luminaires as Urban’s Donny Osmond and Brooke Shields, Strong’s Corey Feldman, and Walker’s Emmanuel Lewis) while singing and dancing up a storm to songs designed to recall such actual Jackson 5/Michael Jackson hits as “ABC” and “Beat It.” (It turns out the latter originated as “Let a Friend Help You Beat It,” a salute to the joys of mutual masturbation.)

Anthony’s gleefully childlike Michael and Batiste’s sexy, charismatic Thrihl-Lha are the only cast members to play just one part, with Abelson, Dory, Nichols, Lilly, Mills, Strong, and Walker shining brightly in a great big bunch of featured and cameo roles and Robin Walsh appearing briefly near the end.

For The Love Of A Glove’s second act could use a fifteen-minute trim, but there can be no nitpicking about Andrea Keller’s clever production design, Derrick McDaniel’s dazzling lighting, Jill McGraw’s inventive props, Glenn Schuster’s razor-sharp sound engineering, and above all Ann Closs-Farley’s supremely inventive costumes and Walsh’s absolutely fabulous puppets: human, animal, and alien alike.

For The Love Of A Glove is presented by Bazalaam Beats Productions and produced by Leigh R. Crawford, Tony Jones, Betsy Zajko and Burk Zanft

Zajko is assistant director. Sarah Down Lowry is production stage manager. Urban is assistant stage manager.

Ronald Binion is lead puppet builder. Danny Wayne is fight choreographer. Andrew Lederman is associate music director. Glenn Schuster is sound mixer. Michèal David Ricks is technical director.

Casting is by Victoria Hoffman. Cast members Justin Anthony Long and Daniele Gaither did not appear in the performance reviewed here.

After an original early-2020 run got cut short by Covid, For The Love Of A Glove has risen like a phoenix three years later.

Those who find four-letter words a no-no, hold religion sacred, believe that talk of sex is taboo, deem Michael Jackson above reproach, and/or don’t have a funny bone in their body might be advised to seek out yet another Guys And Dolls or Kiss Me Kate.

For everyone else, For The Love Of A Glove is a deliciously scabrous treat.

The Carl Sagan – Ann Druyan Theater at the Center For Inquiry, 2535 W. Temple St., Los Angeles.
www.fortheloveofaglove.com

–Steven Stanley
February 25, 2023

 

 

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