The Beginning of “The End of All Flesh”

If there were a dating app to match theatre-goers with shows, any successful software would have paired me up with The End of All Flesh, the new bluegrass musical by Greg Kotis, Tony-winning co-creator of Urinetown. But that doesn’t mean I’d have cottoned to it! Many’s the time that things are promised that aren’t delivered, and your correspondent goes home cranky. This, however, is not one of those times. While it is impossible for any show to OVER-deliver, this one fills its mandate maximally, infusing one with non-stop giddy pleasure like a hit of laughing gas.

The End of All Flesh strips down the human story to a cartoon parable, a core cast of four living out the endlessly repeated cycle of human folly, with echoes of The Book of Genesis, Greek mythology, The Skin of Our Teeth, Li’l Abner, and ecological depopulation scenarios like I Am Legend.Rosseau and Hobbes are cited, and the relative merits of patriarchy, matriarchy, and polyandry are hashed out Shavian style to the tunes of fiddles and banjos. Author Kotis distils corn into moonshine here, and passes the jug to us personally by playing the role of Pa, who rules his post-apocalyptic clan pretty much solely on account of his possession of firearms and willingness to do violence. (I love how somehow his hillbilly beard makes him resemble Marx, and his glasses, Trotsky). His real life wife Ayun Halliday plays Ma, the hope of the world, and by that I mean both the character and the actress who plays her. The young ‘uns are Boy (Sammy Pignalosa), an opened-minded and idealistic youth but easily led and maybe not too bright; and Girl (Maithili Ginde) the requisite wild card, a mix of Eve and Lillith and Cain. Is she here to save these people or destroy them?

Among the many unique pleasures The End of All Flesh offers is a reminder that what goes down, must come up. We’re at the end of something here in America, and it’s horrible, and it hurts, and we must do everything to stop it. But even if the worst happens and it all turns to ashes, presumably there will be a chapter after that — another opportunity for redemption. And that too could well be squandered. Until the chance after that. Who knows? Maybe the cockroaches will be the ones to get it right.

I’ve been watching Kotis and Halliday work this bluegrass thing from afar for months now, with their weekly side project The Wayfaring Strangers. I was grateful for a chance to HEAR what they’ve been up to, along with Music Director and Fiddler Melody Allegra Berger, guitarist Stephen Anthony Elkins, and Marty Isenberg, who plays an upright acoustic bass. The musical pleasure begins with a pre-show before you even enter the theatre, and it never stops for more than a couple of minutes. Nor does the movement, briskly and winningly staged by Avery Rose Pedell.

It is a solid hour of happiness, and it leaves you wanting more, which I hope will come to pass. I walked out thinking that I would welcome not just another 30-60 minutes more of the show, but also seeing the whole damn thing another 15 times, and then playing the cast album another 50 besides. Having just won “best musical” in the New York City Fringe, it is now held over at least another month or so. I suspect that its future is much broader than that. It could play endless weeks like The Fantasticks, or very easily go on tour (small cast, handful of props), or, like Urinetown it could go all the way to Broadway, though for that it needs another act. Have you noticed that there has been a lot of really excellent theatre been created of late? This show does not break the streak.

Get yer tickets here.