One of the most tender love songs currently heard on a New York stage is sung by a cannibalistic killer. Its title can’t be repeated here, and you won’t be hearing it covered by Harry Connick Jr. anytime soon.
But “I Want to Smell Your C – – – ” is one of the highlights of “Silence! The Musical,” the vivaciously vulgar musical spoof of “The Silence of the Lambs.” The hit of the 2005 Fringe Festival is back with a bang — and a suave new leading man — for a summer run.
Featuring songs by brothers Jon and Al Kaplan and a book by Hunter Bell (“[title of show]”), “Silence!” boasts priceless performances by Jenn Harris, reprising with deadpan genius Jodie Foster’s lisping FBI trainee Clarice Starling, and Broadway heartthrob Brent Barrett (“Grand Hotel,” “Chicago”) as her killer mentor, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the part so memorably played by Anthony Hopkins.
You know what you’re in for with the opening number, sung by a chorus of floppy-eared “lambs.” For the next two hours, the show reprises the 1991 film’s memorable scenes in wickedly satirical fashion, replete with such songs as “Put the F – – king Lotion in the Basket,” “In the Dark With a Maniac” and “I’d F – – k Me.”
Takeoffs like these often dissolve into self-conscious silliness, but “Silence!” sidesteps that with marvelously straight-faced performances. Staged and choreographed with comic precision by Broadway veteran Christopher Gattelli, it’s filled with a string of visual gags. A View-Master is used to represent serial killer Buffalo Bill’s night-vision goggles, and Lecter easily wraps his arm around the glass divide separating him and Clarice. And it’s safe to say you’ll never look at Silly String in the same way again.
Harris, expertly mimicking Foster’s downcast facial expressions and rigid physicality, has gotten even funnier since the show’s debut. Broadway veteran Barrett (“Grand Hotel,” “Chicago”) uses his matinee-idol looks and beautiful tenor voice to superb effect, making his Lecter as sexy as he is dangerous. The standouts among the terrific ensemble include Deidre Goodwin as Clarice’s overly friendly roommate, Stephen Bienskie’s gender-bending Buffalo Bill and the rubber-faced Jeff Hiller as, among other characters, an obsessively self-pleasuring inmate.
As reverential of its source material as it is gleefully subversive, “Silence! The Musical” is a hell of a lot funnier than it has a right to be.