Lemmings (National Lampoon)
National Lampoon: Lemmings, a spinoff of the humor magazine National Lampoon, was a 1973 stage show that helped launch the performing careers of John Belushi, Christopher Guest, and Chevy Chase.[1][2][3][4] The show was co-written and co-directed by a number of people, including Sean Kelly.
National Lampoon: Lemmings
Lemmings opened at The Village Gate on January 25, 1973, and ran for 350 performances.
The songs from the show were subsequently issued as a record album. A video of one of the original performances, National Lampoon: Lemmings: Dead in Concert 1973, was eventually made available several decades later.
The show was revived in 2007–2008, and an attempted reboot was to be staged in March 2020.
The cast included:[5]
Later cast replacements:
Revivals[edit]
In the fall of 2007, National Lampoon, Inc. revived National Lampoon's Lemmings for a nationwide theatrical tour. The show consisted of a multimedia presentation of live sketches written and performed by the cast, which were integrated with related comedy videos.[10]
In 2008, National Lampoon's Lemmings went into production with ManiaTV! on a half-hour web-based sketch comedy show.[4] Notable cast members included Adam Devine, Blake Anderson, Kyle Newacheck and Anders Holm of Comedy Central's Workaholics fame, Jillian Bell, and Mark Gagliardi from Comedy Central's Drunk History and The Thrilling Adventure Hour.
In 2020, the company rebooted Lemmings as "Lemmings: 21st Century", which was scheduled to debut in a two-night engagement at Joe's Pub in Manhattan in March 2020 (right at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic).[11][12] Instead of spoofing Woodstock, the new stage play "tackle[d] modern festival culture through Downfall, a parody mash-up of corporatized events like Coachella and Bonnaroo."[2]