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Except for a misbegotten movie that conflated it with the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, The Wild Party was forgotten until Spiegelman’s version came out in 1994. Six years later, not one but two musical adaptations premiered in the same season: Andrew Lippa’s at the Manhattan Theatre Club (February) and Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s on Broadway (April). The obvious next step would be to dig out whatever else March wrote that might be worth reviving, and Silent Theatre Company has taken it, staging March’s follow-up to The Wild Party, The Set-Up.
The story resumes a decade later. Two slimes, Cohn and McPhail (no ethnic punches pulled here), need a chump to lose to an up-and-comer named Sailor Gray. They pick Pansy, who’s now a paunchy shadow of his former self. Though the Sailor’s manager has authorized $20 for a dive, Cohn and McPhail figure they can get the same result and keep the money if they don’t tell Pansy about the fix. Like Rocky Balboa, Pansy doesn’t know it’s a damn show—he thinks it’s a damn fight. But it’s a no-win situation for him all the same.
