No Singing in the Navy

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About the Show

Before shipping off to war, three sailors chase life, laughter, and the truth behind the anthem.

No Singing in the Navy follows three sailors with just 24 hours of freedom and a hundred dollars between them before they’re shipped off to war—and likely, to their deaths. Determined to live fast, laugh hard, and feel everything while they still can, the trio plunges into a chaotic day of booze, bravado, and brief beauty.

Told with just three actors and one piano, this irreverent new musical dismantles the glossy optimism of the “Golden Age” songbook. No Singing in the Navy is a sharp, darkly comic reflection on mythmaking, masculinity, and the lies a nation tells to keep marching forward.

Critic Reviews (7)

“the proceedings land as aimless as the sailors themselves, dissolving from the memory like sea foam.”
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"Beautifully observed and idiosyncratic, they let Cramer speak in dialogue rather than monologue. They kept the show outward-gazing"
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"This piece would be timeless under normal circumstances, but with American boots on the ground in conflicts all over the world, now it’s downright chilling"
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"School Pictures, Cramer's previous piece for Playwrights Horizons, had its ups and downs, but it had a point of view...and a penetrating eye for detail. By contrast, No Singing in the Navy is vacuous, an inside joke shared mainly by the author and himself."
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"This is so scattershot it's practically formless, and I didn't laugh out loud once; as the absurdities piled up, the returns diminished."
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a satirical musical that’s really a scattershot revue that’s really a contemplation in serviceable tunes and idiosyncratic lyrics of identity, unrequited love, dementia, war and death.
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There’s plenty of talent on display here, and an appealing let’s-put-on-a-show quality, but it’s hard to sustain this much twee over an entire show.
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