'Gutenberg!': A Font of Laughs About Broadway

The goofballs behind "Gutenberg! The Musical" make no bones about what they don't know regarding their biographical subject, but you have to smile at what they invent. Take, for instance, the name of the buxom German lass who's smitten with the inventor of the printing press: Helvetica.

She's played by burly Andrew Lloyd Baughman in the Landless Theatre Company's gleeful little production, which captures the pluck and starry-eyed hope of Broadway wannabes stretching back to "42nd Street," and to Mickey and Judy putting on a show in the barn. Baughman and his brother, Matt, play Bud and Doug, the two authors of "Gutenberg!" who are in search of a major backer. Could their small, brave musical contain the kernel of a Broadway megahit?

Gosh, they hope so! The Baughmans portray the composing team with the bright-eyed hopefulness of rookies convinced that they're on the edge of something big. Bud and Doug couldn't be sweeter as they tackle all the roles in their teeming -- nay, swarming -- spectacle of how Johann Gutenberg staved off illiteracy and fended off Nazis.

And if the facts don't parse, Bud and Doug gently explain that they are simply bending to the dictates of Broadway, whether that means creating a big first-act finish or incorporating Serious Themes. Thus their patient description of the "I want" song (a yearning ballad that sets the stakes), plus a full-stage kick-line that you wouldn't expect two people to successfully pull off on their own, even in the cozy confines of the District of Columbia Arts Center.

Sure, the bloated Broadway musical makes a fat target, but writers Scott Brown and Anthony King whale at it so agreeably that it's hard not to go along. Besides, it's hard to resist a comedy that crusades against illiteracy while having its lovelorn heroine croon, "I don't know how to read . . . him."

The Baughmans, directed by John Sadowsky, are fetchingly eager, singing with skill and gusto while gamely dancing in every style you can think of. The attention-deficit choreography, credited in the playbill to Bud and Doug, switches gears by the measure, grinding from Fosse to hip-hop to Russian-style squats and leaps. You have to love the unselfconscious way the Baughmans just do it.

Forget costumes and set; this is a backers' audition, more or less, with each character identified by what's scrawled on baseball caps. Bud and Doug ask the audience to imagine with them, even during intermission (the show runs 85 minutes, with only a make-believe break).

Charles Johnson, who accompanies on electric keyboard, dons a vaguely cranky persona; he doesn't seem pleased to play along with the antics. But audiences who love Broadway and/or like to see its inanities mocked won't have that problem. They'll be swept up by the intensity of swelling musical numbers bellowed by the questing Gutenberg and a power-mad monk (his nemesis), while grinning with the sensibility that spawned such lines as: "He cradled his dead baby in his illiterate arms. Blackout."

Gutenberg! The Musical by Scott Brown and Anthony King. Directed by John Sadowsky. Set and props designer, Melissa Baughman; costumes, Elizabeth Reeves. Through April 6 at the District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. Visit http://www.landlesstheatrecompany.org.