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Better than a real boy band!
The story, if you can call it that, focuses around a pop quintet's final show and their attempt to use God-loving songs to save the souls in the seats. The approximately two-thirds-full crowd at the 2 p.m. Sunday show wasn't terribly eager to clap along -- half of the audience looked like the last boy band they followed was the Monkees -- but a uniformly strong cast didn't let that stop them from delivering silly songs like "Church Rulez" as if they were playing to an arena packed with screaming 12-year-old girls.
The music industry, thankfully, has moved on from the boy band craze, but the show still feels relevant, at least in its send-up of the business' fickle, financially obligated priorities, and in its wink-wink acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of supposedly spontaneous on-stage preaching that actually feels as unrehearsed as an infomercial. The number in which the guys incorporated Lamb Chop-style hand puppets is, um, not quite as fresh.
But forget the serious stuff. "Altar Boyz" is just an opportunity to laugh at Adam Zelasko's faux-Spanish accent as Juan, bad boy Luke's (Tyler McGee) use of "exhaustion" as a euphemism for "alcoholism" and the dynamite singing voices of all five cast members, particularly Brian Crum as secretly/blatantly gay Mark. It's cheeky, funny and aware of its own inherent goofiness, which is a lot more than can be said for most real boy bands.
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