(Photo by Michael Brosilow)
Theatre
history, as it so often does, is repeating itself once again - this time at
Northlight Theatre. "[title of show]", the meta-theatrical
four-person musical that tells the wacky, against-all-odds story of its own
creation, opened on Friday night at the Skokie theatre, which is about as
unusual and unfriendly a venue for the amiable, miniature meta-musical as
Broadway was in 2008.
Created
in a kinky cauldron of eagerness, desperation, and wanton boredom by Jeff Bowen
(music and lyrics) and Hunter Bell (book), crowds became positively enamored
with the show and its four affably approachable stars at the 2004 New York
Musical Theatre Festival and during a subsequent full production at the
Vineyard Theatre Off-Broadway. But when the 'little showtune that could'
transferred to the Great White Way, the usual highbrow babble about what
belongs on Broadway commenced. The show ran a more than respectable 102
performances at the Lyceum Theatre, propped up by a positive review from the New York Times and adorable cult
following that refer to themselves as "tossers”.
The show received a single Tony Award nomination for Bell's awfully funny book,
but unfortunately lost to juggernaut “Billy Elliot”.
Now,
at Northlight Theatre, despite a sizable and open subscriber audience, I expect
that "[title of show]", a musical I personally find impossible to
fully dislike, will face similar challenges and dissent –
or, this time, more likely ambivalence.
"[title
of show]"s meta-theatricality was originally driven by the absurd notion
that four nobodies who had the gall to, not only write a show about themselves,
but also place themselves in it as the stars, could expect to get to Broadway
let alone survive in the commercial tundra. Like any memoir of extraordinary
circumstance, audiences eagerly came to watch these actual people, living out their
own dreams onstage, tell their story in song and dance –
part musical, part performance art.
Subsequent
productions, though, have been quaint, however charming tales of how a show
made it to Broadway - a more ragtag "Smash", if you will. Explaining
the existence of itself from the genesis of an idea all the way to its bow on
Broadway, “[title of show]”
is a combination of story, messed up silliness, and unpreachy artistic lessons.
For show geeks, there is also a barrage of obscure flop references that really
hit home just how many musicals have failed on Broadway –
which is, today, retrospectively hilarious. Chicago, though, is dominated by fare similar to the size, rebelliousness,
and abstractness of "[title of show]" in its earliest incarnations, so
the musical at Northlight doesn't really come as a shock to frequent
theatregoers. It just feels slightly awkward at such a stuffy venue.
"[title
of show]" is, I assume, an incomprehensibly different show regionally from
what it was on Broadway. I say this not having seen “[title
of show]” in New York, but the four original
stars in a workshop of their new collaboration, "Now. Here. This." in
June at the Vineyard. Hunter, Jeff, Susan, and Heidi are insane characters on
the page, to be sure, but Bell, Bowen, Blackwell, and Blickenstaff, their real
life doppelgรคngers, own their ample cuddly
idiosyncrasies in a manner that's just about impossible to imitate.
Northlight's cast featuring McKinley Carter as Susan, Matthew Crowle as Hunter,
Stephen Schellhardt as Jeff, and Christine Sherrill as Heidi, exert a power
plant's worth of energy imbuing all sorts of weirdnesses on these characters.
But that weirdness, not being their own, is more of an obnoxious approximation –
like when your best friend starts stealing your mannerisms.
Many
of these characters’ physical mannerisms are a result of
original director Michael Berresse’s jerky,
camptastic choreographed movement and staging. Northlight’s
production, directed by Peter Amster, borrows liberally from Berresse’s
stage aesthetic, which, like the set of “Noises Off”
or the choreography of “West Side Story”,
has become symbiotically bound to Bell and Bowen’s script and
score. Amster moves the show well, juxtaposing a transitional smoothness with
the book’s childish attention span.
Working
together significantly better as an ensemble than as individuals, the sole
fantastic performance here is Schellhardt as Jeff. Though openly introverted
like Bowen, Schellhardt had a unique twinkle in his eye and an effortlessness
to his humor, with his one-liner grammar corrections giving me some of my
heartiest laughs. Because he never pushes quite so effortfully as Crowle and
Carter, Jeff’s persona becomes the easiest to latch
onto.
Bowen's
score, though puny in relation to those belty Broadway beasts, meshes
uncommonly well with Bell's book. Limited to a single piano, played with ample
support and graciousness by Chicago's favorite music director, Doug Peck, the
tunes have a jovial kitsch to them that never descends into tweedom.
Despite
what is lost in the regional translation, the musical's positive, yet not too
overly sentimental message about the necessity of art and creativity to a
person's livelihood remains as inspiring as ever. The didactic toe-tapper,
"Die, Vampire, Die!" sung with gravitas by Carter, depicts vampires
as "any person or thought or feeling that stands between you and your
creative self-expression." It's a triumphant, thrilling song that will
have you dragging your old easel out of the attic just as soon as you pull into
the driveway. It also should leave theatremakers feeling relieved that
Chicago's pack of vampires is a touch less foreboding than New York's bloodthirsty
coven.
“[title of show]” with a
book by Hunter Bell and Music & Lyrics by Jeff Bowen runs at Northlight
Theatre through June 10th.
