Go! review

If you love musicals, you’ll surely love “Musical of Musicals: The Musical.”

If you loathe musicals, you might like it even more.

If you don’t know your Rogers and Hammerstein from your Kander and Ebb, however, you might be left in the dark.

There’s one simple plot, described thusly on the proscenium: I can’t pay the rent! You must pay the rent! I can’t pay the rent! I’ll pay the rent.”

But here, it’s told in five 15-minute segments in the style of various composers of Broadway musicals by four actors who play variations on the same character. The cast includes Joanne Bogart, who is also the lyricist, as the various aspects of Abby.

In the first segment, “Corn!,” the musicals of Rogers and Hammerstein take a good skewering for their down-home goodness, with references to “Oklahoma!” (naturally) as well as “The Sound of Music,” loaded with puns and (naturally) corny Americana humor (“Don’t throw OKs at me,” says one character).

Stephen Sondheim, whose recent revivals of “Company” and “Pacific Overtures” were developed at the Playhouse, is not immune to attack in the segment titled “A Little Complex,” in which Jitter, a frustrated artist who is also the landlord of an apartment building called “The Woods, offers the batty June a chance to pay her rent by posing for him — or die — in  dark, over-rhymed minor key laments.

“Dear Abby” hits the highlights of Jerry Herman’s “Mame” and “Hello, Dolly” by poking fun at the ever-present washed-up diva who knows everybody’s business.

In “Aspects of Juanita,” an Andrew Lloyd Webber mock-opera finds the characters tired of singing everything (“We never talk anymore!”), where even the most mundane dialogue is given musical weight. “Who cares if you’re over the hill when you’re over the top,” one character sings.

Finally, Kander and Ebb, authors of “Chicago” and “Cabaret,” take the heat of “Speakeasy,” which includes hilarious faux-Fosse choreography and a spectacular finale that never seems to end.

A lover of musicals will love not only the wacky humor, but the way that the creators have absolutely nailed the styles of the various authors, and loathers of musicals will love how they pick at the things that make musicals so cloying and obnoxious.

• WHAT: “The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!” by Joanne Bogart and Eric Rockwell
• WHERE: Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park, Cincinnati
• WHEN: Through Dec. 23
• COST: $48.50-$58.50
• MORE INFO: (513) 421-3888; www.cincyplay.com