Season Opener

Big Red: a musical comedy

Plot Synopsis:

Big Red begins with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engle in spotlight center stage, writing the Communist Manifesto. As they finish the last page, the curtain opens to a tank in Tiananmen Square with student protesters at foot. Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky sit atop the tank discussing their philosophies as the masses below sing about their hunger and loss of freedom. The men happily lay out their plans. This is, for most of the leaders, their only interaction as the rest of the musical takes place in Cuba, China, Afghanistan, East Berlin, Vietnam, and the USSR (or Russia, or the Soviet Union or whatever it wants to be called at that time). We see Trotsky and Stalin wrestle for control (literally and metaphorically), the Berlin Wall go up, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Fall of Saigon. We also see the softer side of the leaders we’ve been raised to hate: Stalin and Trotsky as mourning lovers, Karl Marx being tossed out of his brothers’ troupe, and Castro getting his mustache dirty. While paying no heed to timelines, historical accuracy, or cohesiveness of plot, this musical appropriately celebrates the little red government that could.

Song List:

Preface for the Proletariat– Marx and Engle

Tiananmen Square Dance – Mao and the Chinese

Lenin, What a Lover, My Lover – Trotsky and Stalin

Missile Crisis Tap Dance – Castro and the Cubans

Karl, the Black Sheep – Karl, Chico, Groucho, and Harpo Marx

Oh! What a Wall! – Ensemble

Those Pesky Americans – Stalin, Mao and Castro

HUAC, You Whack – Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Ensemble

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