Theater: The Lion Roars (With Pride)

This one-man musical written by and starring Benjamin Scheuer is sweet, unassuming, very tuneful and very good. But you don’t want to overpraise it. It’s a charmer people will enjoy the most if they let it sneak up on them. It’s worth seeing, I’ve casually told some friends, definitely the best new musical I’ve seen so far this year. Then they’ll go, start to smile when they realize it’s going to be good and then relax into the rare pleasure of seeing a show that is unexpectedly very good indeed. The staging is simplicity itself. Scheuer comes out looking casually snazzy in a blue suit, walking onto the intimate stage of The Studio at Stage II, which is filled with various guitars, mostly acoustic. He starts to play the song you can hear a portion of in the video below and music fans will immediately relax: Scheuer is a confident guitarist and a canny songwriter who makes songs as casual as conversation but as well-crafted as can be.