“Ginger Twinsies” at the Orpheum Theatre (Photo: Matthew Murphy)

Directly across town from the Orpheum Theatre, where Kevin Zak’s new Parent Trap parody Ginger Twinsies is ticking funny bones, the comedian Josh Sharp has debuted his new comedy show, ta-da!, at the Greenwich House Theater. By coincidence, I saw them on consecutive nights, perhaps drawing an unconscious connection between the two. Or maybe it just highlighted what was already there.

Almost a decade ago, Sharp and co-creator Aaron Jackson staged their own Parent Trap parody musical called Fucking Identical Twins at the Upright Citizens Brigade to such overwhelming success that it was adapted into an A24 film, retitled Dicks: The Musical in 2023. Jackson and Sharp take the central premise of The Parent Trap and fashion it around themselves, two people who do not look alike, and yet become the titular twins. The characters, locations, and most of the plot devices are different, but it’s undeniably riffing on David Swift’s 1961 Disney film and the Nancy Meyers remake from nearly forty years later. 

Ginger Twinsies sticks closely to the 1998 remake in a canny bit of elder-Millennial nostalgia. Meyers’ film introduced Lindsay Lohan to audiences and became an important cultural touchstone for girls and gays of my generation. Zak doubles down on that, situating the characters from Meyers, Swift, and Charles Shyer’s screenplay amidst mile-a-minute gags that reference practically everything the thirty-something audience has ever cared about. There’s no time to linger. Before a joke even lands, there’s another one flying by. 

With such a volume of material, it’s inevitable that some will hit better than others. There is an overreliance on Harry Potter jokes that feel less than clever and in the overall tailspin, it might have been nice to trim a few of the less substantive punchlines to make room for the others to have their full shrift. 

Zak’s play succeeds best when he offers his own takes on the details of The Parent Trap’s plot and characters. Fleshing out the girl who yanks Annie’s duffel bag from the scrum of luggage into a supporting character (and an adult lesbian) is ingenious. There’s also an insanely funny recurring joke where Hallie’s father calls her “squirt” and Matthew Wilkas slightly underplays it every time, which only makes it more hysterical. 

Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds are a perfect match as Annie and Hallie, one a white man and the other a Black woman, far from twins and instantly recognizable as opposites, which the play capitalizes on to great effect. Jimmy Ray Bennett and Grace Reiter are also excellent in the supporting roles of Martin, Annie’s Butler, and the iconic Chessy, Hallie’s…nanny? Housekeeper? Bennett and Reiter fulfill the classic second couple tropes, appearing in the margins with an interjection and a squishy facial expression. 

But Zak’s greatest innovation on The Parent Trap’s plot is his centering of Meredith Blake, the girls’ impending stepmother who is impeding their plan to reunite their parents. Meredith wants to ship them off to boarding school in Switzerland (here: Azkaban, in one of those Harry Potter jokes that doesn’t really work) and, Zak asks, can you blame her? The girls are relentlessly torturing poor Meredith who only wants to marry a sexy, wealthy businessman. Phillip Taratula’s performance is full of ice and machination, but it’s also surprisingly relatable. For, I can safely assume, a largely childless audience, it’s easy to look at these pranking preteens as the real villains.

I’m glad I re-watched Nancy Meyers’ The Parent Trap a couple hours before I saw Ginger Twinsies so that I could focus less on the plot and more on actively catching the thousands of jokes this talented cast and writer/director Zak were lobbing. I’d recommend you do the same – the movie is a delight (Natasha Richardson’s drunk scene!) and, after, you can extend that summer night smile in the East Village at Ginger Twinsies.