this week in broadway

HADESTOWN

Hermes (André De Shields) narrates the love story between Eurydice (Eva Noblezada) and Orpheus (Reeve Carney) in Hadestown (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 5, $109-$249
www.hadestown.com

After a thirteen-year gestation period, Anaïs Mitchell’s sizzling-hot Hadestown has descended on Broadway, burning it up to packed houses at the Walter Kerr Theatre. Mitchell wrote the book, music, and lyrics to the Tony-nominated show, which has transformed since 2006 from a small presentation in Vermont with friends and a 2010 concept album to evolving productions at New York Theatre Workshop, the Citadel in Canada, and London’s West End. The fiery musical is a potent combination of the Greek myths of Persephone and Hades, Orpheus and Eurydice, flavored with the American version of the proletarian struggle against capital. The narrative journeys from Persephone’s raucous jazz bar into the underworld, telling the tragic mythological fable of a doomed love affair between Orpheus (Reeve Carney), here written as a naïve, wide-eyed dreamer, and Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), who becomes a practical and realistic young traveler trying to survive in supremely hard times. They meet at a railway station on the road to hell, which is run by the devious King Hades (Patrick Page) and his far more sympathetic wife, Persephone (Amber Gray), from atop their not-quite-ivory tower. “Now some may say the weather ain’t the way it used to be / But let me tell you something that my mama said to me: / You take what you can get / And you make the most of it / So right now we’re living it,” Persephone sings.

Down below, in hell, a workers chorus of factory slaves (Afra Hines, Timothy Hughes, John Krause, Kimberly Marable, and Ahmad Simmons) toils away in horrific heat. The proceedings are narrated with devilish charm, Our Town-style, by Hermes (André De Shields), the messenger god. “It’s a sad song / It’s a sad tale, it’s a tragedy / It’s a sad song / But we sing it anyway,” he explains. When the desperate Eurydice is lured by Hades, Orpheus can save her only by writing the most beautiful song ever written as the Fates (Jewelle Blackman, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, and Kay Trinidad) keep a close watch on it all.

Hades (Patrick Page) and Persephone (Amber Gray) survey their domain in sizzling Broadway musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Director Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812; Small Mouth Sounds) marvelously melds a steampunk aesthetic with New Orleans bravado and depression-era gloom, maintaining an energetic fast pace to what, at its heart, is a simple, poetic love story. Mitchell’s music, performed by onstage musicians (pianist Liam Robinson, violinist Dana Lyn, cellist Marika Hughes, guitarist Michael Chorney, trombonist Brian Drye, double bassist Robinson Morse, and percussionist Ben Perowsky) as if at a honky tonk, range from R&B, soul, and jazz to folk, blues, country, and pop with enthusiastic orchestrations by Todd Sickafoose and rousing choreography by David Neumann that avoid typical Broadway melodrama. Rachel Hauck’s set, anchored by Hades’s grim, looming tower, seems to breathe smoke and fire. Michael Krass’s costumes include some ravishing touches, from Persephone’s green velvet dress and Hades’s impeccable pinstripe suit to Hermes’s spectacular sharkskin ensemble.

Eurydice (Eva Noblezada) makes a decision she’ll regret as the Fates hover over in Hadestown (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Page (Spring Awakening, Coriolanus), whose booming baritone echoes throughout the theater, and Carney (Penny Dreadful; Hello, Stranger), who plays Orpheus with a sweet innocence, are worthy adversaries, having already battled it out in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, in which Carney was the web-throwing superhero and Page the villainous Green Goblin. Noblezada (Les Misérables, Miss Saigon) does well as the underwritten, underdeveloped Eurydice, while Gray (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812; An Octoroon) has a stomping good time as Persephone. Mitchell and Chavkin make a strong connection between the burgeoning love between the young Orpheus and Eurydice, who are fighting fate for a chance at a life together, and Hades and Persephone, who lost their spark long ago and might not be able to get it back. There are also references to modern-day climate change, capitalism, and politics without getting heavy-handed, offering the hope of spring. “Wipe away your tears, brother / Brother, I know how you feel / I can see you’re blinded / By the sadness of it all,” Persephone declares. “Look a little closer and / Everything will be revealed / Look a little closer and / There’s a crack in the wall!”

TOOTSIE THE MUSICAL

Michael Dorsey (Santino Fontana) and Jeff Slater (Andy Grotelueschen) lament their situations in Broadway musical adaptation of Tootsie (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Marquis Theatre
210 West 46th St. at Broadway
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $79-$469
tootsiemusical.com

Robert Horn moves Sydney Pollack’s 1982 hit, Tootsie, from television soap opera to self-reflective Broadway musical in the book for the Broadway musical adaptation of the film, a ten-time Oscar nominee, continuing at the Marquis Theatre through December 22. The movie starred Dustin Hoffman as Michael Dorsey, an impossibly difficult thespian who dresses as a woman, Dorothy Michaels, to land a job on a daytime soap; he lives with his goofy best friend, Jeff Slater (Bill Murray), is close with his ex-girlfriend, determined actress Sandy Lester (Teri Garr), and falls for one of his costars, Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange). In the Broadway version, Dorsey/Michaels is played with flair and panache by Santino Fontana, who dresses as a woman to play the nurse in Ron Carlisle’s (Reg Rogers, who was played in the movie by Dabney Coleman) disastrous musical sequel to Romeo & Juliet entitled Juliet’s Curse. (The role of Julie’s father, who has the hots for Dorothy and is played in the film by Charles Durning, is excised from the show.) Fontana changes hair and costumes at near-record pace as he flits between his ever-growing role onstage while trying to maintain his offstage relationships and keep his ruse a secret from everyone except Jeff (Andy Grotelueschen).

Dorothy Michaels (Santino Fontana) has some pointers for Julie Nichols (Lilli Cooper) as they rehearse Juliet’s Curse (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Michael battles on-set with the womanizing Carlisle; angers his agent, Stan Fields (Michael McGrath, in a very different role from the agent played by Pollack in the film); auditions for the same part Sandy (Sarah Stiles) covets; and haplessly attempts to woo Julie (Lilli Cooper). While the arc of his instant success worked in the movie more than three dozen years ago, it often strains credulity here, particularly during the show-within-a-show’s opening night. But getting there can be lots of fun, with antic choreography by Denis Jones and tongue-in-cheek music and lyrics by David Yazbek, although Scott Ellis’s (The Elephant Man, Kiss Me, Kate) direction is bumpy and inconsistent, Simon Hale’s orchestrations of the ballads are overly conventional, and Dorsey is occasionally too unlikable as the production stumbles over making itself relevant in the #MeToo generation.

Sandy Lester (Sarah Stiles) wears her heart on her sleeve as Jeff (Andy Grotelueschen) looks on in Tootsie (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Tony nominee Stiles (Hand to God, Avenue Q) nearly steals the show as the desperate Sandy, bringing the house down with “What’s Gonna Happen?,” documenting her futility in both life and career; Tony nominee Rogers (Holiday, The Royal Family) is appropriately slimy as the sleazy, self-important director; Fiasco veteran Grotelueschen (Into the Woods, Cyrano de Bergerac) is warm and funny as Jeff; and Julie Halston (On the Town, Anything Goes) supplies solid support as producer Rita Marshall. William Ivey Long’s costumes and Paul Huntley’s hair and wig design are absolutely fabulous, and David Rockwell’s constantly-in-motion set has its own choreography. There was a sweet, unscripted incident the night I went, the first performance after the production had been nominated for eleven Tonys; when Stan tells Michael he might be up for a Tony, the audience burst into spontaneous applause for several minutes as Fontana (Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Brighton Beach Memoirs), who earned a well-deserved nod for Best Actor in a Musical, sheepishly grinned and blushed: a meta-moment in a production built around its own kind of meta.

GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS

Gary (Nathan Lane) and Janice (Kristine Nielsen) have got quite a cleaning job ahead of them in Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 16, $39 – $169
garyonbroadway.com

Downtown fave Taylor Mac makes quite an impression with his Broadway debut, the eminently strange and hysterically funny Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. The play is set just after the bloodbath that concludes Shakespeare’s violent tragedy and is prefaced by a monologue by a midwife named Carol (Julie White), who self-referentially explains directly to the audience, “Like God, a sequel hides inside an ending: / When time is up you pray that it’s extending. / For life, to the cultured, and to the philistine / Once felt, is craved ’til thrills become routine. / But once routine the thrills, to thrill, must grow. / And if they don’t, an outrage starts to show. / So double up on savagery and war: / To satisfy you multiply the gore.” She introduces not only the rhythmic nature of the dialogue and the British accents all three characters will speak in but also the Monty Python-like comedy of spurting blood in which anything goes and no joke is too high or low. The Clown (named Gary by Mac and portrayed with extra relish by Nathan Lane), who had delivered a letter to Saturninus in the original Bard play, has avoided execution by agreeing to become a maid. Little does he know that he will have to work with the stern, humorless Janice (Kristine Nielsen) to clean up more than a thousand ragged bodies piled high in the royal banquet room, a fate perhaps worse than death.

Carol (Julie White) find herself in an icky predicament in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

“I always was a clown who hated clowns,” Gary, who used to juggle pigeons on the street, confesses to the bodies. Belittled by Janice, he tells her he is “more like an everyman who’s a nobody else” and shares his dream of becoming a fool, which he describes as “a clown with ambition.” (Master clown and actor Bill Irwin is credited with the movement.) Janice teaches him the ropes, which involves thoroughly eliminating the remaining gas from each victim and then sucking out their innards and blood using two separate hoses. Mac includes a parade of flatulence and penis jokes that are not the usual Broadway fare while also taking on the current political climate in America. “Ya think the streets are all clean and nifty? Ya know as well as I it’s a hell on earth out there and only getting worse, what with the autocracy turned to a democracy turning back to an autocracy, as we speak,” Janice, who refuses to talk in rhymes or Iambic pentameter, says. A moment later, Gary bursts into tears and Janice uncaringly asks, “What ya crying for?” He answers, “The state of the world.”

The puns and buffoonery keep on coming as Pulitzer Prize finalist Mac (A 24-Decade History of Popular Music) and five-time Tony Award-winning director George C. Wolfe (Angels in America, Topdog/Underdog) push Janice, Carol, and Gary deeper into the mess left behind by the powers that be. The near-endless supply of dead people on Santo Loquasto’s imaginative set evokes the casualties of wars waged by tyrannical governments. “Seems the casualty is how casual it is,” Gary opines. But there are also glimmers of hope. Explaining the surprising emotions he experienced when he was barely saved from being hanged and saw the sky as if for the first time, Gary says to Janice, “Once ya feel that, it’s proof, aint’ it? Proof ya don’t gotta live your life accepting the muck.” He believes he can save the world, which Mac thinks everyone is capable of. Referring to the court, Gary says, “If two maids could turn the hopelessness of a massacre into a coup of beauty, they too can imagine a better world.”

Gary (Nathan Lane) impresses Janice (Kristine Nielsen) for a moment in Broadway comedy (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Tony winners Lane (Angels in America, The Producers) and White (The Little Dog Laughed, Airline Highway) and Tony nominee and Obie winner Nielsen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Dog Opera) have a blast together. At the last moment, Andrea Martin, who was cast as Janice, got hurt and had to leave the show, so Nielsen moved from Carol to Janice and White came on as Carol, creating a formidable comic trio with a lot to say about society while making the audience laugh itself silly.

Mac, who uses the gender pronoun “judy,” delivers some grand pronouncements without becoming preachy, getting right to the point when Gary declares that the next step should be “not a violent coup. An artistic one. An onslaught of ingenuity that’s a transformation of the calamity we got here. A sort of theatrical revenge on the Andronicus revenge. A comedy revenge to end all revenge. Well, not just a comedy. A sorta folly. Not a spectacle. Or a comedy folly that is a spectacle. Sorta a machination. That’s full of laughter. But more than laughs. But with the laughs. Well, sorta a thinking man’s laughter. But could be a knee-slapper.” Which is just what Mac’s play is.

INK

Editor Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) takes over Rupert Murdoch’s Sun in Ink (photo © Joan Marcus 2019)

Who: Bertie Carvel, Jonny Lee Miller, David Wilson Barnes, Bill Buell, Andrew Durand, Eden Marryshow, Colin McPhillamy, Erin Neufer, Kevin Pariseau, Rana Roy, Michael Siberry, Robert Stanton, and Tara Summers
What: Ink on Broadway
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
When: Tuesday – Sunday through July 7, $79-$189
Why: At the beginning of James Graham’s Tony-nominated Ink, which takes place on Fleet Street in 1969–70, soon-to-be international media mogul Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) asks newspaper editor Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) what makes a good story. “Well, it’s the five ‘W’s, isn’t it,” he says, listing the first four — Who, What, Where, When — then hesitating before getting to the last one. “So what’s the fifth? The fifth ‘W’?” Murdoch implores. “Fifth ‘W’ I used to think was the most important, now I think it’s the least. Fifth ‘W’ is Why,” Lamb responds. Murdoch: “You think the least important question is ‘why’; I would have said that was the most important question.” Lamb: “Once you know ‘why’ something happened, the story’s over, it’s dead. Don’t answer why, a story can run and run, can run forever. And the other reason, actually, honestly, I think, is that there is no ‘Why?’ Most times. ‘Why’ suggests there’s a plan, that there is a point to things, when they happen and there’s not, there’s just not. Sometimes shit — just —happens. Only thing worth asking isn’t ‘why,’ it’s . . . ‘What next?’”

Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) and Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) check their progress in MTC newspaper tale (photo © Joan Marcus 2019)

Graham (Labour of Love, Privacy) and director Rupert Goold (King Charles III, American Psycho) follow that advice in the sparkling Manhattan Theatre Club presentation of the award-winning Almeida Theatre production, running at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through July 7. The play dives right into the Who, What, Where, and When as Murdoch decides to buy the failing Sun newspaper from the company that publishes the Mirror and hires exiled editor Lamb to run it. It’s thrilling to watch Lamb put together a ragtag staff, including news editor Brian McConnell (David Wilson Barnes), chief sub Ray Mills (Eden Marryshow), sports editor Frank Nicklin (Bill Buell), woman’s editor Joyce Hopkirk (Tara Summers), persnickety deputy editor Bernard Shrimsley (Robert Stanton), and novice photographer Beverley Goodway (Andrew Durand), as they attempt to not only put out a newspaper immediately but, within one year, surpass the Mirror in circulation, a ridiculously absurd proposition — but one that drives Lamb, Murdoch, and his devoted deputy chairman, Sir Alick McKay (Colin McPhillamy), who are willing to do just about whatever it takes to make it happen, much to the consternation of Mirror chairman Hugh Cudlipp (Michael Siberry) and editor Lee Howard (Marryshow), who worry about the integrity of their industry.

Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) checks in on the Sun in Tony-nominated Ink (photo © Joan Marcus 2019)

Two-time Olivier winner Goold adds glitter and flash to the proceedings, with the sexy Stephanie Rahn (Rana Roy) occasionally breaking out into song and dance with various characters, turning Bunny Christie’s multilevel, dark-gray, crowded stage into a hopping nightclub, with fun choreography by Lynne Page. Tony nominee Carvel (Matilda the Musical, The Hairy Ape), employing a slight hunch and an overly affected interpretation of Murdoch’s voice, and Miller (Elementary, Frankenstein), bold and forthright as Lamb, make a dynamic duo; even though we know how it’s all going to turn out — particularly how tabloids would present so-called news to the public — we root for them to succeed against the stodgy old guys who actually care about truth and quality. Jon Driscoll’s projections add color to the proceedings, primarily the familiar red of the Sun logo. The serious proceedings, the repercussions of which are still being felt today, with Murdoch’s ownership of such papers as the New York Post and such television stations as Fox News, President Trump’s favorite channel, are infused with a wickedly dry sense of humor; even the insert telling audience members to turn off their cellphones is like the front page of the Sun, blaring the headline: “Cellphone Humiliates Playgoer.”

KING LEAR ON BROADWAY

Glenda Jackson wonders where it all went wrong in King Lear revival on Broadway (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Cort Theatre
138 West 48th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 9, $35-$129
www.kinglearonbroadway.com

Theater aficionados would likely pay good money to watch the inimitable Glenda Jackson read the phone book, as the proverbial platitude goes. But director Sam Gold challenges that now-outdated cliché with his misguided production of King Lear, which boasts the remarkable actress and former longtime British MP as Shakespeare’s declining ruler. On the night I attended, early in the show a valet bringing Lear the crown stumbled and dropped the prop. Jackson let out an angry howl that echoed throughout the Cort Theatre in what looked to be an ad-lib, but it summed up everyone’s frustration with Gold’s handling of the tragedy. The usually dependable and insightful Tony and Obie winner (Fun Home, Circle Mirror Transformation) seems to be going out of his way to unnecessarily complicate virtually every aspect of this consistently awkward staging.

King Lear (Glenda Jackson) has something to say to his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Ruth Wilson) (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

The story takes place in a gold-plated rectangular, horizontal space, with characters in relatively modern dress. (The set is by Miriam Buether, with costumes by Ann Roth.) Ruth Wilson is excellent as both Cordelia and the Fool, although it is sometimes hard to tell when she is one or the other. John Douglas Thompson is stalwart as Kent, his authoritative voice booming, but the rest of the cast seems lost, seeking Gold to guide them not unlike poor Tom (Sean Carvajal) leading his blinded father, Gloucester (Jayne Houdyshell), to the edge of a precipice. The Duke of Cornwall is portrayed by Russell Harvard, a deaf actor who is followed around by Michael Arden, who translates for him in American Sign Language. Philip Glass has composed a lovely score, performed by violinists Cenovia Cummins and Martin Agee, violist Chris Cardona, and cellist Stephanie Cummins; when they unobtrusively play in the far back corner, all is well, but later they come to the front and mingle with the actors, which is unnerving and off-putting. Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel) at first shows empathy for Cordelia, but that changes fast, leading to a sexual expression that made the audience gasp in horror. Pedro Pascal is ineffective as the devious Edmund, while Carvajal is too plain as his too-trusting half-brother, Edgar. The cast also includes Dion Johnstone as the Duke of Albany, Aisling O’Sullivan as a vicious Regan, Ian Lassiter as the King of France, and Matthew Maher as a creepy Oswald. Oh, and there are gunshots.

Ruth Wilson, Glenda Jackson, and John Douglas Thompson are the bright spots in Sam Gold’s revival of King Lear (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Fortunately, watching Jackson for nearly three and a half hours — she does take that long break at the beginning of the second act, and the play suffers even further in her absence — makes this Lear worth it; Jackson, now eighty-two, might be a wisp of a thing, but she radiates intense strength and greatness every step of the way. But be advised that this is not Deborah Warner’s 2016-17 version that took London by storm. I am no traditionalist by any means — for example, I adore what Daniel Fish has done with Oklahoma! — but Gold has deconstructed the play only to reconstruct it with, dare I say, a Lear-like madness that just too often is baffling if not downright annoying. New York has seen many a Lear over the last dozen years — Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Derek Jacobi, John Lithgow, Frank Langella, Sir Antony Sher, Michael Pennington, and Sam Waterston — and Jackson is a worthy addition to that list, but it is telling that she received neither a Tony nor a Drama Desk nomination for her performance, and the production also did not get nods for Best Revival. It’s like an imperfect storm, with Jackson at the center, trying to survive the downpour, along with the rest of us.

BURN THIS

Adam Driver and Keri Russell star in Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Hudson Theatre
139-141 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 14, $59 – $315
855-801-5876
www.thehudsonbroadway.com

Adam Driver is scorching hot and Keri Russell sizzles in Michael Mayer’s otherwise surprisingly lukewarm revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, which opened last week at the Hudson Theatre. Oscar and Emmy nominee Driver is deserving of a Tony nod for his ferociously physical, incendiary performance as Pale, a Jersey restaurant manager unable to deal with the tragic death of his younger brother Robbie, a gay dancer who was killed in a boating accident with his lover, Dom. The play is set in 1987 and takes place in a huge industrial loft apartment in Lower Manhattan where Robbie lived with fellow dancer Anna (Russell), a straight woman in a relationship with successful screenwriter Burton (Tony nominee David Furr), and Larry (Tony nominee Brandon Uranowitz), a wisecracking gay man who works in advertising. One night Pale shows up drunk, loudly complaining about New York City, parking, phone messages, new shoes, social politeness, and anything else that comes to mind, rattling on without a filter. He constantly uses words about heat when talking about himself and his life, declaring that his “feet are in boiling water,” he has a toaster oven for a stomach, his normal temperature is about 110, and it’s hot enough in the apartment for them to “bake pizza.” He says he’s “a roving fireman. Very healthy occupation. I’m puttin’ out somebody’s else’s fire. I’m puttin’ out my own. . . . Or sometimes you just let it burn.”

Despite her better judgment, Anna, who is branching out as a choreographer, is strangely attracted to Pale, who is a stark contrast to the more self-contained Burton, who lives in Canada and is always talking about the cold, including snow and “glacier activity”; the only time he brings up heat is when he tells Anna about her upcoming dance, “Make it as personal as you can. Believe me, you can’t imagine a feeling everyone hasn’t had. Make it personal, tell the truth, and then write ‘Burn this’ on it.” Here Wilson is describing his own process in writing the play; it was indeed personal, inspired partly by the death of a friend’s brother, as well as the AIDS epidemic claiming the lives of so many New York artists. He wrote “Burn this” at the top of every page until he realized it should be the title of the play.

Burton (David Furr), Anna (Keri Russell), and Larry (Brandon Uranowitz) have a brief moment to cool down in Burn This at the Hudson Theatre (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Despite the strong cast, led by Lortel Award winner Driver (BlacKkKlansman, Look Back in Anger), whose body commands the stage with an intense, dangerous fury, and Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominee Russell (The Americans, Fat Pig), who has a sweet tenderness as Anna, the play never catches fire. Derek McLane’s set is lovely, with large back windows that look out on the city, an outside world that the characters can’t reach yet, and Clint Ramos’s costumes are sexy and alluring, from Pale’s sharp suits to Anna’s slinky dresses and hapi coat. The unending references to hot and cold, fire and ice grow tiresome, including the leitmotif of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire”; would Larry really sing that? Pulitzer Prize winner Wilson (Talley’s Folly, Angels Fall) and Tony winner Mayer (Spring Awakening, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) also incorporated Springsteen songs into a 1984 revival of 1965’s Balm in Gilead. The play made its Broadway debut in 1987, running for more than a year at the Plymouth Theatre, with John Malkovich as Pale and a Tony-winning Joan Allen as Anna. A 2002 revival at the Signature paired Edward Norton and Catherine Keener. In order for the play to work, it has to have the fire and passion at least reminiscent of A Streetcar Named Desire, but this production, even with its powerful moments and strong performances, too often simmers when it needs to blister and blaze.

BE MORE CHILL

Jeremy Heere (Will Roland) takes a pill to make him more popular in Be More Chill (photo by Maria Baranova)

Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 29, $49- $199
bemorechillmusical.com

While I sat mouth agape at the jaw-dropping inanity that is Be More Chill on Broadway, I looked around at the teenage girls sitting all around me. I was genuinely envious of the sheer glee they were experiencing, their eyes transfixed in front of them, their mouths singing along with every one of the songs. I am not the target audience of this runaway juggernaut, this little show that could, which is breaking attendance records at the Lyceum Theatre. (However, in another part of my life, I work in children’s books, for a company that has published several books by Ned Vizzini, whose 2004 YA novel is the basis for the musical, so I’m no mere disinterested curmudgeon.) That said, the production is a disaster. The cast is energetic, but director Stephen Brackett’s pacing is woefully inconsistent, Joe Tracz’s book is flagrantly flawed, Joe Iconis’s music and lyrics are wholly drab and forgettable, and Chase Brock’s choreography is slipshod and clumsy. The climax is so feeble I wanted to hide my head in embarrassment for everyone onstage. But none of that matters with this review-proof phenomenon, which is like a musical version of Saved by the Bell, with Screech in the lead.

Jason Tam stars as the SQUIP in Broadway transfer of Be More Chill (photo by Maria Baranova)

As has been well documented, Be More Chill failed to make much of an impact when it premiered at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 2015, but the cast recording became a surprise hit, resulting in a sold-out run at the Signature Theatre last year and the Broadway transfer, with much of the cast intact since its beginning. The plot follows the trajectory of high school student Jeremy Heere (Will Roland), who is lured by bad boy Rich Guranski (Gerard Canonico) into taking a pill known as the SQUIP (which stands for “super quantum unit intel processor” and is personified by the devilishly handsome Jason Tam) in order to make him more confident, popular, and cool. Upon the SQUIP’s commands, Jeremy starts ignoring his best friend, the nerdy Michael Mell (George Salazar), and hanging out with stylish mean girls Chloe Valentine (Katlyn Carlson) and Brooke Lohst (Lauren Marcus) to make his crush, Christine Canigula (Stephanie Hsu), jealous, while she flirts with class superstar Jake Dillinger (Britton Smith) as they all participate in the school play, A Midsummer Nightmare (about Zombies). Jeremy also has to deal with his sad, lonely father (Jason “SweetTooth” Williams), who spends most of his days at home in his underwear and bathrobe. As the pill takes hold, Jeremy sacrifices his personal identity and true self – and everything around him falls apart.

Tiffany Mann nearly blows the roof off the Lyceum Theatre as Jenna Nolan in Be More Chill (photo by Maria Baranova)

The musical hits many current hot-button teen issues, including sexual orientation, depression, bullying, suicidal thoughts, divorced parents, drug and alcohol abuse, sex, and more, but none of them is examined in any realistic way, instead becoming clichés and caricatures. Beowulf Boritt’s glam, ever-changing set is amusing, Bobby Frederick Tilley’s costumes are fun (especially at the Halloween party, with Jeremy going as one of the hive-minded Borg), and Tiffany Mann blasts it into hyperspace as Jenna Nolan, but the rest of the show is a major drag. Sadly, Vizzini killed himself in 2013 at the age of thirty-two; in addition, “Jeremy” is the title character in the 1992 Pearl Jam song inspired by the real-life suicide of a high school student. Unfortunately, a magic pill was not able to save them; nor can anything save this show, despite its breakout popularity. And popularity, particularly in high school, can be a double-edged sword.