“Silence! The Musical,” playing at the 9th Space Theater, features all your favorite characters from the 1991 thriller (inset left), including Clarice Starling and Hannival Lecter (played in the musical by Jenn Harris and David Garrison). (Astrid Stawiarz)
Standing on line to see “Silence! The Musical,” for the third time, Kips Bay salesman Scott Kirschenbaum explains why he can’t stop coming back to the hottest new off-Broadway cult show.
“We just need to laugh, and there hasn’t been a really funny musical in a long . . . ,” he stops and catches himself. “I mean, ‘Book of Mormon’ is really funny, but this is a lot cheaper and a lot dirtier.”
The 50-year-old continues, “It also has the best dream ballet sequence since ‘Oklahoma!’ ”
Kirschenbaum is referring to the legs-wide-open number set to “I Want to Smell Your C – - - ,” an obscenity-laden ditty that can match any of the infamous song-and-dance shockfests now playing on the “Mormon” stage.
But with tickets for “Silence!” costing as little as $25, this show — an unauthorized parody of the Oscar-winning thriller “The Silence of the Lambs” — is a heck of a lot cheaper than the Tony-winning “Mormon,” for which prices rise as high as $477. And while “Mormon” takes a perverse pride in its profane lyrics, “Silence!” actually crossed the C-word barrier several years ago when it first premiered as part of the New York Fringe Festival in 2005.
In fact, the two shows have lots of similarities. There’s the cult appeal among devoted fans, two of whom brought a butterfly-themed gift backstage to “Silence!” the other night to pay homage to the 1991 movie poster featuring Jodie Foster with a big moth on her mouth.
The composer-lyricists for “Silence!” are Jon and Al Kaplan, a duo just like “Mormon” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who also started out as Web sensations.
The Kaplan brothers first attracted a staggering number of fans after they put a collection of songs on the Internet in 2002.
Now “Silence!,” which started previews this week, is also proving to be a hit. A full house attended the first preview at Performance Space 122, and several upcoming shows in its open run are already sold out, with producers noting that ticket sales are increasing every day.
“I’m not sure anyone would have looked at the source material and said, ‘That’s going to make a great musical,’ but we thought it would, and we think it does,” says Hunter Bell, who adapted the Kaplan brothers’ music and script into a live production. “I identify with Matt and Trey. I think they lead from their very funny and smart hearts and took risks. It’s what ‘Mormon’ does, and it’s what we do in ‘Silence!’ ”
In the same way that “Book of Mormon” shocks audience members out of their seats with songs that push the envelope, “Silence!” knocks it out of the park with numbers that pay tribute to moments in the film. One scene features the cross-dressing psychopath Buffalo Bill dancing around, almost completely naked, and singing to himself in the mirror, “I would f - - k me.”
The lyrics are: “Let me hide my thing/I’d buy me a drink/Get lost in my eyes/I’d flirt and I’d wink/I’d seduce me with lies/The guys in the past they’d avoid me/They’d dodge me/And duck me/But now they’d f - - k me/I’d f - - k me too/I’d f - - k me/ F - - king black and blue.”
Not for the faint of heart or the faint of humor, exactly. As Stephen Bienskie, who plays the iconic role, explains, “Yes, I get to perform acrobatics with my genitalia. It’s really interesting because, when the film came out, it was such a different world. It was such a different climate in the gay community. Everyone was so super-sensitive. It’s so interesting to walk the line between just being campy and parody. This is parody. This is utmost respect to the film.”
With updated jokes about a victim looking like she was “on an episode of ‘Hoarders’ ” or Hannibal Lecter talking about a “Dirty Sanchez,” this is “Silence of the Lambs” getting the same nothing-is-sacred treatment pioneered by Parker and Stone’s “South Park.”
“This musical has brought the original movie up to date,” explains 43-year-old Andrew Hecht, a senior casting associate producer who has seen the show three times. “This is humor you couldn’t do back in the day. They’ve really reinvented it.”
After the production premiered at the Fringe, brief reprisals popped up in London in 2010 and New York earlier this year, until the show finally landed a permanent home at this 199-seat theater — and its cult fan base eagerly traveled along with it. “Fans were so hungry to see it, they actually flew from New York to London to see the show in the tiny 60-seat theater there last year,” says Victoria Lang, a “Silence!” producer.
Of his fourth time seeing the musical, Sean Allan Krill says, “The film itself is so on the line of being over the top, and then Hunter and the Kaplans just took it a little bit further over the line. Initially, I think they were supposed to have a five- or six-week run, and I said, ‘Just wait, this is going to catch on.’ ”
As actress Jenn Harris, who plays Clarice Starling, says: “It’s like a rock show. The audience is talking back and screaming and remembering iconic moments in the film.” David Garrison, after his first night playing Hannibal Lecter, jokes: “If this is any indication of what the fans are like at the show, I would do it forever. I would say, as Hannibal, ‘I want to eat them alive,’ but that’s a little too on the nose.”
“Silence!” is playing in previews at the 9th Space Theater at Performance Space 122. Tickets are available at 212-352-3101, and through silencethemusicalnyc.com. The show officially opens Nov. 15.
mstadtmiller@nypost.com