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Fleet Week: The Musical

nytheatre.com review by David Pumo
August 15, 2005

Fleet Week is billed as a gay salute to those patriotic musicals of yesteryear, like On the Town. Instead of Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, the show features four sailors all in various states of sexual confusion and denial. Two are regular sex partners, but the chaplain—who prefers to be called “Daddy” rather than “Father”—assures them (with a song) that “You’re Only Queer on the Pier”: what happens at sea doesn’t count.A third sailor is actually a woman who thinks she has to dress up like a man in order to serve her country (it’s supposed to be present day), and the man she’s fallen in love with doesn't know she's a woman. In her song, "Loose It in the Front," the show's wittiest and best-written number, she tells us it's been like this since junior high. The forth sailor is the one she loves who…well…he seems to like her because he thinks she’s a man, and he’s a real flaming queen with religious issues, and…aaanyway…They hit the streets of New York during fleet week looking for romance and adventure. They stumble into a bathhouse where they overhear a group of terrorists from Martinique plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Silliness, faux intrigue, and mostly below-the-belt humor ensue. Fleet Week plays like a raunchy Saturday Night Live sketch. The characters have names like Seaman Stayn and Seaman Swallows, and the musical numbers are mostly okay and chuck-full of similar high-school-level double entendres. Cute, if you like that sort of thing.Tony Nominee Melissa Hart plays the Mayor of New York, looking like Bella Abzug. She also plays the Statue of Liberty, who apparently has an ongoing romance with the ship's captain (hey, it’s a musical). The cast also features Micah Bucey, who won a 2004 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award for his performance in The Only Thing Straight Is My Jacket.