Theater: What’s That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling

Theater

What’s That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling

Atlantic Stage, New York

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Most theater lovers will instantly “recognize the breed of self-anointed creative genius being delectably roasted in What’s That Smell,” said David Rooney in Variety. This spot-on parody of “third-rate Broadway-style musical theater as practiced by an untalented fictitious composer” is seriously funny. Writer-director-actor David Pittu plays Jacob Sterling, a no-talent whose writing credits include a musical adaptation of Private Benjamin and a song cycle based on a tune about his mother’s olfactory response to the streets of New York. The framing device—a mock interview of Sterling for a low-budget cable talk show called Composers and Lyricists of Tomorrow, or CLOT— perfectly showcases Pittu’s seamless performance. Even if the evening plays as “more of an extended sketch than a full-bodied theater piece,” Pittu’s characterization is more than “strong enough to carry it.”

These songs are truly terrible, said Eric Grode in The New York Sun. But I assume they are terrible on purpose. The tunes, composed by Randy Redd, sound at times “like an anthology of love themes from early-’80s romantic comedies. No piano cliché goes unexploited,” and Pittu’s lyrics never miss a chance to exhibit awful taste. Take the title track of the eponymous song cycle, which begins “What’s that smell? / I can’t quite place it / Is it coleslaw? Is it cheese? / On these city streets, let’s face it / someone always pukes or pees.” Peter Bartlett complements Pittu perfectly as the show’s host and “(ahem) straight man,” Leonard Swagg. If parody’s your pleasure, you’ll likely “find your nostrils flare not unpleasantly at What’s That Smell.”