I'm not into theater; I can see why this would be considered a great play. And I don't know Spies much at all, and this is made for those who know a ton about him; many followed his sordid, and very public, life. I suppose I will start with the positives. The acting, when not over the top, is impressive. I understand that Anden does perfect as Simon. There is at least one good impression of a famous person(the only one I knew well enough to judge how much the guy looks and sounds like him). The music, when not performed in the annoying and silly voices that roughly half the characters have(or that one song where the poor pronunciation of English is distracting), is marvelous, nearly all magnificent choices(if they don't necessarily make complete sense). I think there are some original pieces, well, lyrics, anyway. It is notable and commands respect that, in spite of the real dude being surrounded by young girls, the director insistently cast middle-aged women in those roles. However, I can't claim that this made me laugh even once. I knew not to expect Matthesen's stand-up schtick(meanwhile, he works that psycho eye-blink thing into every part he has, doesn't he?), so I didn't. That isn't it. I simply don't find any of the jokes(with one possible exception) to be funny. And the man that is the subject of this was a jerk, a child in a grown-ups body, who would do despicable things for attention and *because he could*. And as you can probably figure out, it is *immensely* irritating to watch that. This is also noisy at times. It is cool how you don't at any point know what to expect, I guess. And this is well-edited; it was without a doubt unique to experience this live. There is explicitly sexual material, strong language and detailed drug use in this. It is *not* for everyone. The DVD contains an informative director's commentary, a behind the scenes featurette that isn't bad, an interesting interview with Cederholm, three and a half minutes of archive footage of the airline magnate himself, still photos and a quiz that I, for obvious reasons, haven't tried. I recommend this to those who can imagine getting into it. Well-produced, shocking and not mainstream. 7/10
