Altar Boyz
Athenaeum Theatre
August 13 - September 13

When I was 15, I went to my friend’s youth group at the local church. There was lots of singing and dancing, laughing and preaching. The music was pretty, their enthusiasm was commendable, but I just wasn’t buying what they were selling.

This is what I felt sitting in the half-empty, less-than-rowdy audience of the Altar Boyz at the Athenaeum Theatre last Friday night. The actors were talented, the music was nice, but I just had to stop listening to the lyrics.

Played out as if a real tour of a striving Christian boy-band, the five performers sang, danced and told their story - well, at least what little story there was to tell.

Each character was a stereotype - the closet gay who is in love with another member of the band; the token ethnic searching for his family and heritage; the rapper who had to take some time off to go to rehab; the goody-goody leader; and the Jew (alright, so maybe the last one doesn’t quite fit).

Supported by a live band onstage, they sang lines such as “Jesus called me on my cell phone” and “Girl you make me want to wait”. And don’t tell me there is not a more serious ‘lesson’ in this supposed satire with lines like: “People don’t go to church no more. They’re scared of acting like fools… Kneel and say a prayer to Jesus. Kneel and wash your sins away.”

The cast (Dion Bilios, Tim Maddren, Jeremy Brennan, Andrew Koblar, and Keane Fletcher - understudy playing the role of Juan) was the saving grace in the production. They were an endearing ensemble, supporting each other in situations such as improvising responses to audience confessions (which, on the night I was there, involved some of the funniest moments as Juan discussed his love for donkeys in reply to a confession about touching another person’s arse). By the end of the performance I felt sorry that the actors had to make a living attempting to engage an audience with nothing besides a few callouts and the “Soul Sensor DX-12″ machine apparently saving our souls throughout the 90-minute production.

Altar Boyz opened off-Broadway in 2005 and has won numerous awards since then. It is marketed as “the longest running, critically acclaimed off-Broadway musical in years.” I can understand how this production would work a lot better in America than in Australia. The fanatical side of Christianity is less than apparent in Melbourne’s alternative scene.

To be fair, my colleague went to see the production the following night and loved it. She said that it must have offended my agnostic sensibilities. Maybe it did. Or maybe the surface dialogue, cheesy storyline and cringe-worthy lyrics offended my theatrical sensibilities.