27th Heaven

Look, when Steve Martin put Picasso, Einstein, and Elvis in a Parisian bar, he at least had the courtesy to make them funny. Not so with Ian Helprin's 27 Heaven, a painfully pun-filled show about Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin forming a supergroup in Heaven (on account of them all dying at 27). Helprin is, or was, an investigative journalist for Rolling Stone, and between jokes, solemn obituaries are read aloud, from the script, by the narrator (when he's not on saxophone). The jokes are little more than read, though it pains me that any cast had to memorize lines about jamming on invisible Harpocasters, talking with "Pod" (God is a typographical error, as, supposedly, is Ragnarök), or quoting Nordic legends. Honestly? The whole show is a typographic error, nothing close to a "rock musical," and a waste of time. I'd tell you to see it for pure camp, but it apparently costs $43 and has a two-drink minimum, so I'll just give you the best line, which is also accurate for the author: "You wouldn't know poetic verse if it hit you between the iambic pentameter."