It's often said that imitation is the highest form of flattery but sometimes it's just a knock-off of something more original. And I'm afraid the latter seems to be the case with Ginger Twinsies, which opened this week at the Orpheum Theatre.
Written and directed by Kevin Zak, this parody of the 1998 Lindsay Lohan version of “The Parent Trap” movies is clearly hoping to cash in on the newfound appreciation for campy humor that has turned Titanique and Oh, Mary! into mainstream hits. But Ginger Twinsies simply isn’t as clever as they are.
Those earlier shows didn’t skimp on looniness but they bolstered it with well-constructed storylines: what if Celine Dion got to bring her diva-like earnestness and her entire songbook to James Cameron’s movie about the sinking of the Titanic instead of just singing its theme song? what if First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln were a dipsomaniac who would go to any lengths to fulfill a dream of becoming a cabaret star?
As ridiculous as they may be, those conceits provide context for the daffiness that follows in each show and make it easy to enjoy them even if you’ve never seen Cameron’s movie or played hookey when your history classes covered the Civil War.
By contrast, the source material for Ginger Twinsies is both far-fetched and very specific. Identical twins who were separated at birth when their parents split up discover one another at a summer camp years later and decide to trade places as part of a scheme that’s supposed to get their parents back together.
In short, it’s already so silly that there’s not much left to lampoon and if you're not familiar with the details of the plot, you probably won't get the jokes that are handed out.
The show’s main riff is to make one of the twins black and the other white instead of having a single actor play both roles as the movie does. But the joke that everyone still confuses them despite their obvious difference gets old real fast.
Meanwhile, the rest of the show tries to squeeze out laughs with winking shout-outs to other pop culture—Hamilton! “The Devil Wears Prada”!! the “Sex and the City” reboot!!!—whether there's any connection or not.There's also lots and lots of shouting of the f-word and several butt hole jokes, both of which strike me as bargain-basement substitutes for truly imaginative humor.
I'll confess that I was never a big fan of camp. Then Titanique and Oh, Mary! came along and made me think I might be a fan after all. But now I realize that what I liked about those campy shows is what I look for in any kind of theater: they took their art form seriously, worked hard to come up with a fresh take and produced something really good. Ginger Twinsies doesn't do enough of any of that.
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