I decided to end my trip with three comedies, because, well, why not? And yet again, I discovered similar themes among all 3 shows: that they were all parodies of infamous titles on screen, either movies or television.

My NYC pilgrimage's raison d'etre was to see the highly anticipated concert production of Jerry Springer: The Opera. Thanks to David Herriman, I was able to get incredible seats to this blockbuster event, sitting one row away from Robert De Niro, among others!

After funneling through the 200 protestors outside Carnegie Hall, who are none too happy with the show's second act religious content, the sold-out starry crowd got treated to an incredible array of Broadway and Opera's best spouting an arsenal of profanity to some of the most beautifully written music this decade.

In Ben Brantley's love letter review of this concert the next morning, practically begging that the show makes a Broadway bow, he called it the Great American Musical of the 21st Century, even though it comes from London.

The cast, with it's incredibly limited rehearsal time, acquitted to the fiendishly difficult material with aplomb, guided by one of my favorite musical directors, Stephen Oremus. Jason Moore's concert staging gave the complicated evening simple clarity, and let the material speak for itself.

I was especially proud to see a very good friend of mine from college, Katrina Rose Dideriksen, tear the roof off of the house with her rendition of the show's most popular song, I Just Wanna F***ing Dance.

It was a great evening at one of NYC's finest venues, and it made me even more excited to tackle this monster of a show here in Cincinnati this year!

One of the most surprising sleeper hits of the season is the Broadway musical version of the infamous 80's film Xanadu, which boasted a multiplatinum soundtrack by the Electric Light Orchestra paired with one of the worst cult movies ever, and featured Olivia Newton John in a truly unintelligible performance.

Playwright Douglas Carter Beane, who wrote As Bees in Honey Drown and more recently The Little Dog Laughed took the hit score and loosely adapted the movie screenplay, adding a) some dramatic coherence and b) a plethora of jokes making fun of it in the process.

I mean, come on! If you're adapting a work where the main action thrust is to build a sacred place for all of the arts to find inspiration and life, and it's a ROLLER DISCO...you probably shouldn't take it very seriously.

Due to some killer performances from Cheyenne Jackson as the dumb surfer-jock painter, Kerry Butler playing Olivia Newton John playing Clio the muse (complete with her inconsistent and odd Australian accent), and complemented by Mary Testa and Jackie Hoffman as vengeful sister-muses and Tony Roberts in the Gene Kelly role, this 90 minute roller romp is a heck of a lot of fun. And who doesn't love roller skating and killer 80's music?

My final show on my trip was a piece that I knew almost nothing about, and it was still loads of fun. The 39 Steps is a transfer from the recent hit London production, with it's lead actor and director in tow. Although very much under the radar, the critics were rapturous about this one, and I'm glad I got to see it.

Patrick Barlow, a London actor/comedian who is most known for his skewering 2 person shows with his group "The National Theatre of Brent", decided to adapt Hitchcock's famous film The 39 Steps, which at first glance would seem to be unstagable, with multiple locations, huge crowd scenes, railroad chases and more.

Barlow and his director, Maria Aitken, fashioned the show for only 4 actors, and used very basic old school simple theatrical tricks and set pieces to create each scene of the movie, and then cranked up the speed. The show is a true tour de force for 4 performers, playing multitudes of roles in a very heighted, almost vaudeville style.

However, while the show does feature several winking references to other Hitchcock films (a running gag is how many other film titles can the actors name-drop into the dialogue), the show doesn't have any of the mean spirit usually associated with satire. Rather, it's a lighthearted spoof that honestly tries to put the entire movie on stage. And that in itself is a ton of fun to watch.