Time Out Theater Review: "What's That Smell: The Music Of Jacob Sterling"
By: David Cote - Time Out New York
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Tony nominated actor - David Pittu is back on the boards – this time off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company as actor, playwright, and director in "What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling." Contributing correspondent from Time Out New York David Cote filed the following review. As a critic, I try not to be unnecessarily cruel, but what can you say about Jacob Sterling? He is, without doubt, the lousiest composer-lyricist to never, thank heavens, have a show on Broadway. Sterling's tunes are trite and his lyrics are tacky.
He makes Frank Wildhorn sound like Stephen Sondheim. Before you worry about Sterling's feelings, let me tell you that he's the fictional creation of David Pittu, lyricist and lead of the amusing ode to bad taste and self-delusion, "What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling."
"What's That Smell" is basically a sketch-comedy cabaret show devoted to the truly awful songbook of eternally emerging Sterling. Sporting hideous wanna-be hipster clothes and icky blonde highlights, Pittu cuts a ridiculous figure as this never-was hack. The play is framed as a public access TV program hosted by the clueless Broadway aficionado Leonard Swag, played to swishy perfection by Peter Bartlett.
Swag adores Sterling's work, and he guides the songwriter through his biography and stories of how his musicals and song cycles flopped one after another. Sterling samples his cringe-inducing songs about the sounds of lovemaking, international cuisine, and the various aromas one detects in New York. Pittu has a surprisingly agile voice and dryly perfect comic timing, while the tunes, composed by Randy Redd, are the right combination of generic kitsch and clever allusions to other, better, composers.
The material reaches its low mark of tastelessness when Sterling unveils his song cycle about September 11th, called "That Goddamned Day," and a pathetic commercial attempt full of product placements. The sad and funny truth is, even when Sterling sells out, no one wants to buy.
Pittu's satirical revue is strictly for those who know their Broadway composers. For the rest of the audience, the joke wears pretty thin after 15 minutes, and you still have an hour to go.
There's a fine art to being bad really well, and this production could actually stand to be even more terrible.