After almost a year’s run, surprise hit Springtime for Santos has closed. The comedy, starring Kitara Ravache and Anthony Devolder as a scammer who gets caught up in a surprise redistricting and accidentally gets elected, amused audiences with its chutzpah, even though the songs were mostly pretty bad and the dancing even worse.
The premise of the comedy is a familiar one, essentially a retelling of The Producers mixed with a badly realized bit from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. A long-time binational scammer and failed drag queen, George Anthony Kitara Devolder Santos, is looking for a new gig. He has family in Queens and feels at home in the Republican party, which is led by another long-time scammer from Queens. So he hatches a plot. There’s a congressional district that has just been redrawn, and it leans heavily Democratic. So all he has to do is declare himself the Republican candidate, raise a spit-ton of money from Republican donors for his campaign, take more money from the party itself, then take most of the campaign’s money for himself, and lose. Since he would have lost, the donors would not ask too many more questions, George would slink away, and somebody else would be the candidate next time around.
Since this is a musical comedy, a few clever song-and-dance numbers come and go. While 100% Brazilian, he sings My grandparents who were Jewish refugees from the holocaust. While little educated, he sings about The great universities he attended. While little more than a call-center worker, he does a big dance number about his important and high-paid work at leading Banks. He’s even gay when he wants to be and straight when he marries a woman to help her immigrate, singing the almost-memorable tune Love for Cash. But because Gov. Cuomo screwed up the redistricting process singing Am I a Democrat or What? just before being forced to resign himself, a Republican-leaning court creates new districts and suddenly his leans red. And instead of sashaying off into the Rio moon, he finds himself in Washington, with a press corps wondering just where he came from. The scammer is thrown out of the House of Representatives and his next stop is likely to be the Big House. What a riot!
The show closed but the memory may linger on. Lyrics for Springtime for Santos and the closer Prisoners of Politics are welcome in the comments, as I couldn’t come up with any I thought worthy of this fine site.