A new musical comedy chronicles the New Brunswick music scene during the apocalypse

As the end draws nigh, the basement band in the musical comedy "The 11th Hour!" does what it does best: make music. From left, front:Troy Giel, Chris Pasi, Kara Willow, Tam Justin Garcia and Song Ravinan. The show will have three January performances at NY's Hudson Guild Theatre. (Kether Tomkins)

NEW YORK -- The characters in the original musical comedy "The 11th Hour!" -- which will have its world premiere at New York's Hudson Guild Theater Monday as part of NY Winterfest -- include a New Brunswick basement rocker, the rising star astrophysicist he used to date, a committed performer from Medieval Times, a giant snake, cannibals, a group of mole people and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. The end of the world is about 12 hours away.

In other words, standard stuff.

"It's high science fiction and has that 'Rocky Horror'/'Little Shop of Horrors' vibe," said David Seamon, who wrote the music, book and lyrics. "I've been told it's pretty funny."

The show will have three January performances and may possibly then move to an open-ended run, Seamon said. It grew out of a project Seamon, director Annie Rutherford Lutz and Shimmy Schwartz, lead singer of the band Little Rose worked on with New Brunswick's coLAB Arts, a non-profit organization that funds creative projects, connects artists with community partners and seeks to spark conversation. For Seamon, a New Jersey native and Rutgers University graduate, building the story around New Brunswick's basement music scene as the apocalypse approached was an easy decision.

"There's something unique about (the basement culture)," said Seamon, a musician who is a teaching artist for the George Street Playhouse. "We brainstormed and asked ourselves what we would do if the end was coming. We'd want to talk to our loved ones, yes, but we wouldn't be able to go see them because we don't know if we'll make it to them in time. I'd want to step up to a microphone and scream."

Likewise, the musicians in "The 11th Hour" "are really emotionally present throughout the show. You hear a lot of phone calls they make to loved ones in their last moments," Seamon said. "They live a raw, unconditional, uninhibited last day when all they really have is themselves and their music. ... Not unlike the string quartet on The Titanic, they decide to keep on playing."

The 80-minute show features 20 songs -- "It's almost operatic in scale," Seamon said -- with many punk and metal influences. There are three of what he calls "Les Mis" moments, the kind that ratchet up the energy and tension in a traditional musical theater way.

That aside, few things in the show are traditional, which has eight actors playing 25 characters and sometimes even serving as the sets.  All of the sets "are made with our bodies and anything you might find in a basement," Seamon said. "Since it's a basement show, we thought it would be cool if any theater company could put it on with what you'd find in a basement: cardboard boxes, Christmas lights, laundry baskets."

Other oddities: the role of Neil DeGrasse Tyson is played by a woman; the mole people sing, share their religion and host a wedding; and the snake may turn out to be the best ways to navigate traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike. Doom is coming in the form of a talking black hole. The way human bodies will respond to that void is called "Spaghettification."

Then there's the would-be heroine, the ex-girlfriend astrophysicist, who has a way to upload people's brains to an orbiting satellite if only she can make it from New York to New Brunswick in time.

This is a person who has devoted herself to looking at the stars, Seamon said, and yet she change her focus to save others.

"Everything good in the last 12 hours of her life comes from underground," he said. "Literally and figuratively, this is a basement show."

THE 11th HOUR!

Hudson Guild Theater

441 W. 26th St., New York

Tickets: $23, available online at newyorktheaterfestival.com. Jan. 22, Jan. 26 and Jan. 28.

Natalie Pompilio is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She can be reached at nataliepompilio@yahoo.com. Find her on Twitter @nataliepompilio. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.

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