Poseidon! an Upside Down Musical July 2, 2009

Hell in a Handbag's production comes back to the Chopin. There's got to be a morning after. So says the Oscar-winning theme from 'The Poseidon Adventure,' the 1972 camp classic about an ocean liner capsized by a tidal wave. (It was produced by disaster-movie maven Irwin Allen, whose other projects included 'The Towering Inferno' and TV-movie gems 'Fire!' and 'Flood!'). David Cerda's inspired parody, 'Poseidon!,' first produced by Hell in a Handbag in 2002, gets its morning after with this remount. It's framed as a play within a play: Attendees at a New Year's Eve Poseidon party--the movie is set during New Year's--sit down for a screening (allowing for direct, heckling commentary); as the "guests" move in and out of the party, they double as the movie characters. The humor can be delightfully broad, as when Cerda turns Shelley Winters's line "In the water, I'm a very skinny lady" into a faux-underwater musical number, but also brilliantly subtle, like when you realize, pre-tidal wave, the ship's house band is playing the Diana Ross tune "Upside Down." If you didn't catch 'Poseidon!' the first time around, get on board.