National Lampoon: Lemmings | |
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Music | Christopher Guest Paul Jacobs |
Lyrics | Sean Kelly |
Book | David Axlerod John Belushi Christopher Guest Tony Hendra Paul Jacobs Sean Kelly Chevy Chase Gary Goodrow |
Productions | 1973 Off-Broadway |
National Lampoon: Lemmings, a spinoff of the humor magazine National Lampoon, was a 1973 stage show that helped launch the performing careers of John Belushi, Christopher Guest, and Chevy Chase. [1] [2] [3] [4] The show was co-written and co-directed by a number of people, including Sean Kelly.
Lemmings opened at The Village Gate on January 25, 1973, and ran for 350 performances.
The songs from the show were subsequently issued as a record album. A video of one of the original performances, National Lampoon: Lemmings: Dead in Concert 1973, was eventually made available several decades later.
The show was revived in 2007–2008, and an attempted reboot was to be staged in March 2020.
This section needs additional citations for verification .(August 2021) |
The first half of the show was sketch comedy; the second half was a mock rock festival, "Woodshuck: Three Days of Peace, Love and Death", a parody of "Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music." "Woodshuck" featured spoofs of Woodstock performers, including Joe Cocker and Joan Baez, as well as parodies of John Denver, Bob Dylan and James Taylor, plus songs performed by fictional groups (e.g., the "Motown Manifestoes" singing "Papa was a Running Dog Lackey of the Bourgeoisie").
Title | Act being parodied | Lampoonist | Description |
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Welcome to the Woodshuck Festival: Three Days of Peace, Love, and Death | John Belushi | Plus band introductions throughout | |
"Lemmings Lament" | Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young | Paul Jacobs as David Crosby | Freud, Marx, Engels, and Jung (also referred to in performance as Freud, Pavlov, Adler, and Jung), parodying the songs "Woodstock," "Long Time Gone", and others |
"Positively Wall Street" | Bob Dylan | Christopher Guest | Parody of several of Dylan's styles, with the title taken from "Positively 4th Street" |
"Pizza Man" by Goldie Oldie | 1950s-style performers | Alice Playten | Parody of teenage tragedy songs |
"Colorado" | John Denver | Chevy Chase | |
"Pull the Triggers, Niggers" | Joan Baez | Mary Jenifer Mitchell (later replaced by Rhonda Coullet) | A parody of Baez's protest songs and of Dylan's song "George Jackson," in particular. Listed on the album cover as "Pull the Tregroes, Negroes" |
"Lonely at the Bottom" | Joe Cocker | John Belushi | With Paul Jacobs as Leon Russell on piano |
"Highway Toes" | James Taylor | Christopher Guest | Parody of Tylor's heroin abuse referencing Taylor's "Highway Song" |
"Papa was a Running Dog Lackey of the Bourgeoisie" | The Temptations | Paul Jacobs | Parody of "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone", with most of its lines taken from The Communist Manifesto |
"Nirvana Banana" | Donovan | Peter Elbling | Later addition to the show |
"I Do for You" | Joni Mitchell | Alice Playten (later replaced by Rhonda Coullet) | |
Farmer Yassir | Max Yasgur | Garry Goodrow | Parody of the owner of the land on which Woodstock was held, greeting the audience |
Megadeath | Heavy metal groups | John Belushi and Paul Jacobs | Band ends their act by turning the amps so loud that the audience dies |
"Jackie Christ, Superstar" | Belushi, et al. | Parody of Jesus Christ Superstar ; Jesus as a stand-up comedian, with Belushi as King Herod | |
"Deteriorata" | Les Crane | Tony Hendra | Parody of Crane's recording of "Desiderata" |
"Resounding Defeat Day" | Parody of America's first military defeat in the Vietnam War. "Put all your troubles in a nickel bag and smile, smile, smile." | ||
The Rolling Stones | Alice Playten as Mick Jagger | ||
The cast included: [5]
Later cast replacements:
The writers included: [5]
A Time magazine reviewer called Lemmings "an uproariously funny spoof of the rock scene and its counterculture folk heroes," writing that the show's second half was "a brilliantly sustained rock parody," and predicting that, "Lemmings will slay many many more with its high-voltage humor." [6] Reviewers for The New York Times initially gave the play lukewarm reviews, [7] [8] but a subsequent Times mention of the show lauded its "gleeful... desanctifi[cation of the] hallowed touchstones of the rock counterculture." [9] And in 2005, Jake Tapper of the Times called Lemmings National Lampoon's "most famous live performance," writing that, "the team devastatingly satirized Woodstock attendees and performers as mindless masses running off to engage in trendy generational suicide." [1]
In the fall of 2007, National Lampoon, Inc. revived National Lampoon's Lemmings for a nationwide theatrical tour. The show consisted of a multimedia presentation of live sketches written and performed by the cast, which were integrated with related comedy videos. [11]
In 2008, National Lampoon's Lemmings went into production with ManiaTV! on a half-hour web-based sketch comedy show. [4] Notable cast members included Adam Devine, Blake Anderson, Kyle Newacheck and Anders Holm of Comedy Central's Workaholics fame, Jillian Bell, and Mark Gagliardi from Comedy Central's Drunk History and The Thrilling Adventure Hour .
In 2020, the company rebooted Lemmings as "Lemmings: 21st Century", which was scheduled to debut in a two-night engagement at Joe's Pub in Manhattan in March 2020 (right at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic). [12] [13] Instead of spoofing Woodstock, the new stage play "tackle[d] modern festival culture through Downfall, a parody mash-up of corporatized events like Coachella and Bonnaroo." [2]
National Lampoon's Lemmings | ||||
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Live album by the cast of Lemmings | ||||
Released | 1973 | |||
Genre | Comedy, Parody, Rock, folk rock | |||
Label | Blue Thumb Records, MCA Records, Decca Broadway | |||
Producer | Tony Hendra | |||
National Lampoon chronology | ||||
|
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | link |
A cast recording of the show was released in 1973, with album cover art by Melinda Bordelon.
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