The Brodway musical, an artform that gave us classics like Gypsy! and West Side Story, is producing some mighty peculiar offspring these days. In London, artistically and politically retarded theatregoers can take in the English National Opera’s production of Gaddafi: A Living Myth. Brought to you by the same wonderful people who made Jerry Springer: the Opera, which garnered numerous rave reviews (along with some pans, including one Grumpy Gus who said the show did for Americans what The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion did for Jews), the new opera raises many questions, such as “Where’s the music?� and “WTF were they thinking?� You also have to wonder about the degree of self-loathing displayed in a production that glamorizes Qaddhafi, slanders Reagan, and suggests that such a stylin’ desert whackjob couldn’t really have been responsible for an atrocity like Lockerbie.

Not that Americans can take much comfort from this fit of British cluelessness. On this side of the puddle we’ve got Joe Eszterhas, the man whose most memorable achievement was writing the script for Showgirls (pretty impressive, really, since he also scripted both Basic Instinct and Basic Instinct 2). Eszterhas is planning to turn his brain-damaged crack-whore ripoff of All about Eve into a musical—premiering in Las Vegas, natch.

It’s all pretty depressing for fans of the musical. Or music. Or western civilization. In fact, it’s almost enough to make me wish that Cats were still playing. Almost.

(H/t to Defamer, for the “Showgirls� warning, and to Sadie’s gay boyfriend for all things Qaddhafi.)