‘Ginger Twinsies' review: Campy off-Broadway ‘Parent Trap' parody is millennial catnip

New York Post

3 days ago

Theater review GINGER TWINSIES
80 minutes with no intermission. At the Orpheum Theatre, 126 Second Ave.
Am I seeing double?
If the answer is 'yes' at 'Ginger Twinsies,' you might be suffering from heatstroke. Because the funniest bit of writer-director Kevin Zak's stage parody of 'The Parent Trap' that opened Thursday night at the Orpheum Theatre in the East Village is the title characters' complete lack of resemblance.
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The 11-year-old twin sisters, Hallie and Annie, both played by pasty, redheaded Lindsay Lohan in the 1998 film, are taken on here by a white guy, Russell Daniels, and a black woman, Aneesa Folds. They're a pair of hilarious adults, with Red Bull coursing through their veins, who couldn't look less alike.
It's ludicrous that the girls' estranged parents, posh British fashion designer Elizabeth (Lakisha May) and salt-of-the-earth Napa Valley vintner Nick (Matthew Wilkas), can't tell these obviously different people apart. But we go along with it. And the result, stupid as it gets, is very funny. The entire off-its-rocker off-Broadway show, whose sole sin is occasionally trying too hard, is lovably loony.
So, for that matter, is watching a room full of millennials, drunk on nostalgia, mouthing every word and knowing every beat of a 27-year-old kid's movie.
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If you're 29 to 44 and fall into the 'Parent Trap' obsessive category, that would be a fruitful topic to bring up with your therapist next time.
If you don't, well, congratulations. The Disney language barrier of 'Ginger Twinsies' will take a few minutes to ease into. But once you get the gist — and it ain't hard — the comedy amounts to an onslaught of wrecking-ball subtle jokes, barked so loud by the eight-person cast that the bowls of borscht a block away at Veselka vibrate.
4 Aneesa Folds and Russell Daniels star as Hallie and Annie in 'Ginger Twinsies.'
Matthew Murphy
4 Lindsay Lohan's breakout role was as both twins in the 1998 film.
Courtesy Everett Collection
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Zak's smart realization is that 'The Parent Trap' actually functions as a solid stage farce. All the pieces are there: mistaken identities, a love triangle, English accents. Amping up the mischief, since the adult-aimed play can kick the cute movie's PG rating to the curb, plenty of sex humor is tossed in.
As in the Nancy Meyers flick, after British Annie and American Hallie unexpectedly meet at summer camp and discover they're long-lost sisters, they decide to swap personas. Hallie jets to London and Annie heads to California to meet mom and dad and, eventually, force them back together.
From there, 'Ginger Twinsies' takes fond childhood memories and stomps on them with ruthless mockery, a trivia night's worth of 1990s and aughts pop culture references, filthy humor and nuclear energy.
Frankly, at times the show is too high-pitched; a Lindsay's Boot Camp at which even the slightest break is not permitted. So few breaths are taken, the actors' faces become redder than their wigs.
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4 The one-act comedy sends up Nancy Meyers' 1998 Disney movie.
Matthew Murphy
The octet runs like hamsters on a wheel on Beowulf Boritt's cabin set covered in kitschy cutouts. Think Big Ben hand-drawn in Crayola.
But when the play confidently finds its groove in the middle, the Napa and London scenes, the ensemble's comedic skills knock us over like Lindsay Lohan was in that amnesia Christmas movie.
Phillip Taratula is a scream as Meredith — Nick's viperous 26-year-old fiancée. The actor plays the misunderstood minx as a pantomime villain, who enters wearing an absurdly large hat only to take it off to reveal smaller and smaller versions of the same accessory.
4 As Meredith, Phillip Taratula enters wearing a gigantic hat.
Matthew Murphy
As the household help, Jimmy Ray Bennett sneeringly hops between upper-crust butler Martin and Annie's grandpa by barely lifting a hand-held mustache to his lip. And Grace Reiter plays vineyard worker Chessy like she's Roseanne Barr singing the National Anthem.
In what could hardly be called a twist, Wilkas' Nick, the Dennis Quaid role in the movie, takes a sleeveless Village People turn. And May's Elizabeth goes on a hotel bender, making Whitney Houston cracks.
The Orpheum's most famous tenant, 'Stomp,' opened years before 'The Parent Trap' hit theaters, and closed in 2023 after nearly three decades. Since then, the tricky venue has been something of a Goldilocks.
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Some shows have proved too boffo. Others have been too amateurish or niche.
While I don't suspect 'Ginger Twinsies' will find much of an audience beyond Disney+ subscriber millennials or curious St. Mark's bar-flies, it's the first tenant there in two years to strike me as just right.