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Regional Reviews: St. Louis [title of show]
Since then, at least half the directors I've ever worked with were women, not to mention all the actresses and chorines. But I must have developed a very skewed vision of the gender, after the steady precision and immediacy I watched them pour into rehearsal all those nights. You could do a lot worse than spend most of your life in the company of theatre women: grasping for some deeper visceral or emotional or intellectual truth. And backing you up when you manage to get there yourself. Which brings us to Prism Theatre Company's new "gender bend" production of [title of show] at the Kranzberg Arts Center, featuring an all-women cast and directed with a kind of abashed authenticity by Sam Hayes. They push every behavioral presumption through a prism of their own. Which is a life-saving talent, if I do say so myself. The two and a half hour play (with intermission) is by Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen, set mostly in a rehearsal space. And, as we learn through the story, [title of show] began its on-stage life in 2004 at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Here we are witness to (seemingly) everything that came before, during, and after that–every important, foundering, joyful, hilarious moment of it all. But without an ounce of the usual self-congratulation seen in just about any other "words and music" story. The thrill here comes from the impossibility of the chase. After that 2004 festival, [title of show] fell into a period of hibernation, also portrayed on stage. In 2006, it finally reemerged at the Vineyard Theatre and (shocking its creators) and transferred to the Lyceum on Broadway in 2008. All that is in the show, heightening a sense of narrative synecdoche: the audience monitoring and recognizing all the self-reference on stage, and becoming a sympathetic echo chamber. We are dragged into the heart of it, as if we didn't realize a whole invisible superstructure of very familiar hopes and dreams was steadily and indestructibly being welded up all around us, closing us inside along with the characters as the show is constructed down on stage. [title of show] becomes every show you've ever been in, gaining speed to where everything is possible. It's simple, and even delightfully desperate. And (for a theatre person) that's what makes it all so thrilling. Beyond that, it's a bit like A Chorus Line, but for comic singer-actors instead of dancers, wrestling with their acrid doubt and foolish hope, and the dizzying nature of success. A gaggle of disillusioned young New Yorkers ransack their souls over the true nature of the genre, writhing around like idiots, to reinvent it all. Except this time it's entirely women, which somehow makes it seem twice as honest and urgent. The cast (often about 50-50 male/female) also features a keyboardist (the excellent Mallory Golden, the show's music director). And it seems like every gambling chip is on the table as tensions rise, and a distaff quartet of nutty, vulnerable dreamers tries to put up a modern entertainment. The charming "shell-game" choreography at the Kranzberg black box theater is by Cady Bailey, and the set by Caleb D. Long and William Higley grows seductive with the help of lighting designer Catherine Adams. It also feels a bit like Andy Warhol's cans of Campbell's Soup, something so prosaic, raised to the level of art, like every threadbare show in development and every wretched let-down, stewing together in a tide pool of dreams that can only churn out one kind of life, over and over. In spite of the odds against it. In fact, my favorite number comes when the cast pulls a seemingly endless number of Broadway Playbills from flop shows out of a box, conjuring their own humility in the process. (At one point an actress on stage seemed to address me directly, demonstrating a karate kick in my direction, as if to remind me of a musical I'd recently panned. The show also references this website's popular "All That Chat" message board.) Other very strong song and dance numbers include "Change It, Don't Change It," and "Awkward Photo Shoot." The subtle and precise cast includes Katie Orr as Jeff, and Jaelyn Hawkins as Hunter, the two millennial writers bedazzled by Broadway. Rachel Bailey and Savannah Fernelius make up their over-qualified supporting cast. Each of them exists at the margins of Broadway, subsisting almost entirely on a diet of carry-out and disappointment. Until it all comes true. [title of show], presented by Prism Theatre Company, runs through September 8, 2024, at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.prismtheatrecompany.org. Cast (in order of appearance): Production Staff: |
