Everything Fresh at Hysterical ‘Something Rotten!’

The first sign that things might go a little nutty at “Something Rotten!” is in the second song when William Shakespeare is called, well, a “little turd.” The Bard is mocked as “the poster child for why no one should ever procreate” and “a hack with a knack for stealing anything he can.” Those are some of the lyrics to the song “God, I Hate Shakespeare.” The mighty St. James Theatre, where Helen Hayes herself starred in “Twelfth Night” and Maurice Evans played “Hamlet,” has never seen anything like it. You can feel the cobwebs being blown away. “Something Rotten!,” written by three guys making their Broadway debuts, is fresh and hysterical and irreverent. It’s easily the funniest thing to arrive on Broadway since “The Book of Mormon.” The comedy, which opened Wednesday, is set during the Renaissance and portrays Shakespeare (a delicious Christian Borle) as an arrogant, rock star playwright. Two brothers — played with charm by Brian d’Arcy James and John Cariani — are desperate to write a hit show in his shadow. With the help of a soothsayer (Brad Oscar, killing it) the brothers stumble on the notion of writing the world’s first musical. What’s that? “It appears to be a play where the dialogue stops and the plot is conveyed through song,” explains the soothsayer. “I don’t know, I find it hard to believe people would actually pay to see something like this,” replies one of the brothers skeptically.