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Something Rotten is Soooo Good
Something Rotten
Music & Lyrics by Wayne Kirkpatrick & Karey Kirkpatrick
Book by Karey Kirkpatrick & John O’Farrell
Directed by Ilana Ransom Toeplitz
Lyric Stage Boston
May 1 — June 7, 2026
It only takes a moment to realize Something Rotten is delicious. The sweetness, without the sorrow, titillates your senses for the next two-and-a-half hours. It’s an unrelenting good time for anyone, but if you picked up the lyrical references in the first two lines of this post (Hello, Dolly! and A Chorus Line) than Something Rotten is a special treat for you!
I must admit to knowing nothing about Something Rotten when I entered Lyric Stage’s intimate theater, beyond the certainty that the Lyric always creates musical magic in their final show every season. Turns out, Something Rotten ran for almost two years on Broadway, garnered ten Tony nominations in 2015, but lost highest honors to Fun Home. I’ll grant that Fun Home has more heft, but actually, that tale of a lesbian coming of age in a funeral home is not nearly as much fun.
Here’s the plot, though it hardly matters. Welcome to the Renaissance: England 1595. Will Shakespeare is all the rage, while playwright wannabe Nick Bottom and his younger brother Nigel, suffer by…
