How does one make a jukebox musical about an artist who never released a lick of music? You might ask Joe Iconis and Gregory S. Moss, who have done it with The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, a veritable hit parade of the Gonzo journalism pioneer’s career that opts for a treatment traditionally reserved for softer, if not smaller, personalities. Regarded as much for the drug-fueled nature of his writing as for the stylistic (and factual) lines it often blurred, the Thompson of their imagination all but gives them permission to do so: “After all this time, writing is still my favorite drug. It was my music.”

War, plague, or rapture be damned, there is nothing more important to a senior theater student than securing their shining moment in the spring musical (musicale for the Ms. Darbus stans). In the case of Colin Crosby—the aspiring JEGOT (the “J” is a Jimmy Award, naturally) who lords over the Manhattan School’s theater program with an iron jazz-hand—the cancellation of My Fair Lady due to budget cuts is an insult unlike any other and an existential trauma tantamount to the day the dinosaurs met the asteroid. But if the slew of high school musical stories that precede and inform Senior Class, a world premiere musical running at Olney Theatre Center through June 22, have taught us anything, it’s that show people will go to any length to bring up the curtain. So up it goes, rather gloriously, on this new work that offers a fresh riff on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion by infusing the classic play with many of the beloved tropes found in kindred pieces like Fame, Glee, The Prom and, of course, High School Musical.

Reclined in her bed, which she rarely leaves, clinically depressed mother Beth Ann offers, “It’s important to see someone at the start of their career or you don’t get to see how they grow.” Ostensibly, we know she’s referring to Irene Cara and her star-making role in the 1980 film Fame. But we understand she’s really talking about the 10-year-old potty-mouthed, bed-wetting, soon-to-be-famous comedian lying next to her, Sarah Silverman. And what a joy it is to see this tiny Silverman (Aria Kane), sliding into adolescence in a baseball tee and rainbow suspenders, without our privileged knowledge of the extraordinary career that lies ahead of her. Adapted from her memoir of the same name, Silverman, with co-book writer Joshua Harmon and composers and lyricists David Yazbek and Adam Schlesinger (of Fountains of Wayne fame, who passed in 2020), have created a hilarious new-ish musical that takes the piss out of growing up depressed. Following a 2022 run at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company, this re-worked The Bedwetter is enjoying its regional premiere at Arena Stage through March 16.