Despite its title song dropping more F-bombs than you’d think possible in a single number, “F#%king Up Everything” is actually a sweetly old-fashioned boy-meets-girl musical. Set in hipster-populated Williamsburg — quickly becoming a musical theater cliché — it possesses modest charms that won it several awards at 2009’s Musical Theatre Festival.
Christian (Max Crumm) is a children’s puppeteer who entertains his young audiences with puppet versions of such real-life figures as Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag. Unlucky in love, he’s immediately smitten upon meeting beautiful, ukulele-playing singer-songwriter Juliana (Katherine Cozumel) — especially when he discovers that they both majored in queer theory at college. But he faces competition from his longtime best friend, Jake (Jason Gotay), the lead singer of indie band Ironic Maiden.
Although Juliana finds herself attracted to the nerdy Christian—“I think you’re kind of adorable, in an awkward, painfully neurotic kind of way,” she tells him — she later succumbs to Jake’s sexy charms in a moment of weakness.
Meanwhile, Christian’s blogger friend, Ivy (Dawn Cantwell), pines for Jake despite being in a longtime relationship with his drummer, Tony (Douglas Widick), a stoner who sings the show’s single sweetest love song: “Me and My Bong.”
Things become even more complicated when Jake and Christian impulsively agree to an ill-fated threesome with Arielle (Lisa Birnbaum), the sexually voracious music booker of Brooklyn’s hottest club.
While the show’s book by Sam Forman and David Eric Davis is fairly generic, it has many amusing moments, as when Christian gets conflicting romantic advice from his puppets Iggy Pop and the Cure’s Robert Smith.
Davis’ score is both tunefully catchy and authentically indie rock-ish. And it features some genuinely touching ballads, including “If You Were Mine” and “Take Me as I Am,” that movingly express the characters’ romantic desperation.
Energetically staged and choreographed by Jen Wineman and engagingly performed by its youthful ensemble — Crumm is particularly endearing as the socially maladroit Christian — the show is lighthearted, breezy fun. While youthful audiences will find it most relatable, older musical theater fans shouldn’t be put off by its deceptively offensive title. And they won’t even have to board the G train to see it.