The Bardy Bunch: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady
Stephen Garvey
3Below Theatres & Cafe, Guggenheim Entertainment, Producer
In the yesteryear era of 1974’s big-flowered skirts, psychedelic-striped bellbottoms, and paisley patterns gone wild, Arden Amusement Park is set to open amidst a major foul-up: Two rival, family-member bands have both been booked for the opening, and there is soon to be a war between them that not even Shakespeare could have imagined.
But Stephen Garvey certainly can conjure up such a major booboo as his 2011-premiering The Bardy Bunch: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady mashes together in full camp and comedy two popular 1970s sitcoms, a dozen or so Shakespeare plays and plots, and fifteen once-big-hit songs from TV’s The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch. With tongue-in-cheek yet with voices that collectively soar, Guggenheim Entertainment opens the musical’s West Coast premiere that is overflowing with merriment, mock, and murder in the final production of the company’s 3Below Theatres & Cafe, closing after a ten-year life in downtown San Jose.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 3.5 E
The Bardy Bunch: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady continues in a one-hundred-minute (one intermission), West Coast premiere production through April 26, 2026 by Guggenheim Entertainment at 3Below Theatres & Cafe, 288 South 2nd Street, San Jose, CA. Tickets are available at https://3belowtheaters.com/.
Photo Credit: Dave Lepori Photography
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