Off-Broadway ‘Parent Trap’ parody is millennial catnip

Am I seeing double?

If the reply is “yes” at “Ginger Twinsies,” you may be affected by heatstroke. As a result of the funniest little bit of writer-director Kevin Zak’s stage parody of “The Parent Trap” that opened Thursday evening on the Orpheum Theatre within the East Village is the title characters’ full lack of resemblance.

The 11-year-old twin sisters, Hallie and Annie, each performed by pasty, redheaded Lindsay Lohan within the 1998 movie, are taken on right here by a white man, Russell Daniels, and a black lady, Aneesa Folds. They’re a pair of hilarious adults, with Crimson Bull coursing by their veins, who couldn’t look much less alike.

It’s ludicrous that the women’ estranged mother and father, posh British dressmaker Elizabeth (Lakisha Might) and salt-of-the-earth Napa Valley vintner Nick (Matthew Wilkas), can’t inform these clearly completely different individuals aside. However we associate with it. And the end result, silly because it will get, may be very humorous. Your entire off-its-rocker off-Broadway present, whose sole sin is often attempting too exhausting, is lovably loony.

So, for that matter, is watching a room filled with millennials, drunk on nostalgia, mouthing each phrase and realizing each beat of a 27-year-old child’s film.

In the event you’re 29 to 44 and fall into the “Parent Trap” obsessive class, that may be a fruitful subject to carry up together with your therapist subsequent time.

In the event you don’t, effectively, congratulations. The Disney language barrier of “Ginger Twinsies” will take a couple of minutes to ease into. However when you get the gist — and it ain’t exhausting — the comedy quantities to an onslaught of wrecking-ball refined jokes, barked so loud by the eight-person forged that the bowls of borscht a block away at Veselka vibrate.

Zak’s good realization is that “The Parent Trap” truly capabilities as a strong stage farce. All of the items are there: mistaken identities, a love triangle, English accents. Amping up the mischief, because the adult-aimed play can kick the lovable film’s PG score to the curb, loads of intercourse humor is tossed in.

As within the Nancy Meyers flick, after British Annie and American Hallie unexpectedly meet at summer season camp and uncover they’re long-lost sisters, they resolve to swap personas. Hallie jets to London and Annie heads to California to fulfill mother and pa and, ultimately, power them again collectively.

From there, “Ginger Twinsies” takes fond childhood recollections and stomps on them with ruthless mockery, a trivia evening’s price of Nineteen Nineties and aughts popular culture references, filthy humor and nuclear vitality.

Frankly, at instances the present is simply too high-pitched; a Lindsay’s Boot Camp at which even the slightest break shouldn’t be permitted. So few breaths are taken, the actors’ faces turn out to be redder than their wigs.

The octet runs like hamsters on a wheel on Beowulf Boritt’s cabin set lined in kitschy cutouts. Suppose Massive Ben hand-drawn in Crayola.

However when the play confidently finds its groove within the center, the Napa and London scenes, the ensemble’s comedic abilities knock us over like Lindsay Lohan was in that amnesia Christmas film.

Phillip Taratula is a scream as Meredith — Nick’s viperous 26-year-old fiancée. The actor performs the misunderstood minx as a pantomime villain, who enters sporting an absurdly giant hat solely to take it off to disclose smaller and smaller variations of the identical accent.

Because the family assist, Jimmy Ray Bennett sneeringly hops between upper-crust butler Martin and Annie’s grandpa by barely lifting a hand-held mustache to his lip. And Grace Reiter performs winery employee Chessy like she’s Roseanne Barr singing the Nationwide Anthem.

In what may hardly be referred to as a twist, Wilkas’ Nick, the Dennis Quaid function within the film, takes a sleeveless Village Folks flip. And Might’s Elizabeth goes on a lodge bender, making Whitney Houston cracks.

The Orpheum’s most well-known tenant, “Stomp,” opened years earlier than “The Parent Trap” hit theaters, and closed in 2023 after practically three a long time. Since then, the difficult venue has been one thing of a Goldilocks.

Some reveals have proved too boffo. Others have been too amateurish or area of interest.

Whereas I don’t suspect “Ginger Twinsies” will discover a lot of an viewers past Disney+ subscriber millennials or curious St. Mark’s bar-flies, it’s the primary tenant there in two years to strike me as good.