By Cris Franco
“Rules are made to be broken” could be this year’s Broadway motto as exemplified by a trio of successful rogue productions. Unconventional in style and content, one is a teen angst musical that parodies teen angst musicals, the next is an album-turned-stage-show and the last is a play that began as a speech. All the productions have taken an untraditional road to The Great White Way and have a vast cult following. Come join the cult!
Hadestown is the new stage adaptation of the 2010 folk-rock album by Anais Mitchell. It tells of Hades (elegantly macabre Best Actor Musical Tony nominee Patrick Page) who is feeling his underworld threatened. So he holds a rally where he sings to his enslaved factory workers that he’s building a wall, “… to keep us free, keep out the enemy, poverty — because we have and they have not. That’s why we build the wall!”
This song is just one of the many prescient messages contained in this emotionally-charged masterwork which combines two Greek tragedies: the newfound lovers Orpheus (Reeve Carney) and the deceased Eurydice (Tony nominee for Best Actress in a Musical, Eva Noblezada) – and the Lord of the Underworld, King Hades and his often absent wife, Persephone (Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony nominee Amber Gray). Mitchell’s tale has Orpheus descending into Hell to rescue his fiancée from the jealous Hades. Orpheus’s secret weapon is a love song so powerful that it can conquer death itself.
The result is the most celebrated musical of the season with 14 Tony nominations, including Best Musical.
With a Tony-nominated Sound Design (Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz) it’s a sung-through piece told through 32 mesmeric songs. The score is a musical gumbo of Cajun, blue-grass, rockabilly, soul — you name it. Hadestown is an immersive experience that captures you from the moment you enter to see the French Quarter set and the diverse ensemble of street performers (featuring Yvette Gonzales-Nacer and Kay Trinidad as the bewitching Fates). All party as they prepare to guide Orpheus (and us) to Hadestown.
Celebrating the circle of life and death, audiences will recognize the many cultural correlations to Día de Muertos. And because death is part of our humanity, death itself is human – capable of humor, revenge, and compassion. Hadestown is a haunting and hopeful theatrical journey that will forever capture your imagination – and soul. (Hadestown photos by Matthew Marcus). www.hadestown.com
Be More Chill asks, “What if popularity came in a pill? Would you take it, no questions asked?”
Uber-geek Jeremy Heere (played with sublime loserhood by Will Roland) takes that step in hopes of achieving the elusive “perfect life” now that it’s possible thanks to some mysterious new pharmaceutical. But it comes at a cost that’s not as easy to swallow. His enthralling predicament sets the teen angst story on its ear by blending Little Shop of Horrors with Dear Evan Hansen into a contemporary thriller-meets-retro-sci-fi pop musical.
It’s an exciting, comically subversive, and deeply felt new work that addresses the competing voices in the teenage mind. And ultimately proves, there’s never been a better time to be yourself-especially if you’re a loser or geek — or both.
Before arriving in New York, Be More Chill, had already amassed an unprecedented online following with millions of “Chill-Heads” worldwide sharing fan art, streaming the album (over 170 million streams to date), and chatting about the show. In 2017, Tumblr ranked Be More Chill as the second most talked-about musical on its platform, following Hamilton. The attention is well-deserved with a Tony nomination for Best Score, composer Joe Iconis has delivered the perfect blend of the pop-meets-Broadway score.
This is a good trick as most rock/pop scores lack clarity of lyrics and scene development. Iconis demonstrates a deep understanding of the musical structure, yet never lets theatrical convention get in the way of a fresh take on a familiar theme such as the song, “Michael in the Bathroom.” It’s a teen anthem about locking yourself in the bathroom at a party after losing your best friend to the chill pill as sung by Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominee for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, George Salazar who plays Michael. The score to Be More Chill is my favorite of the year, chock full of energetic and surprising songs. I can’t be chill about how much I loved Be More Chill. (Be More Chill photos by Maria Baranova). www.bemorechillmusical.com
What The Constitution Means To Me is by far this season’s most relevant and dare I say, most important play as many parallels can be drawn between the narrative and our current administration’s stance toward immigrants, people of color and most of all – women.
Based on the real-life of writer-performer Heidi Schreck, the action starts decades ago in a wood-paneled, mid-century American Legion Hall. The high walls of the windowless room are completely covered with stern portraits of white military men all looking down at then 15-year-old Heidi. These men and the evening’s proctor, another uniformed male, will watch and judge Heidi’s discourse making sure she sticks to the topic, doesn’t overstep her boundaries and doesn’t go over her allotted time as she delivers her award-winning speech on “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
It begins innocently enough – but over the next 100 intermissionless minutes, Schreck becomes increasingly more impassioned as age brings wisdom and she moves forward in time recounting four generations of female oppression within her own family – and how the founding document controlled their rights and citizenship. She tells of her great-grandmother, a European mail-order bride who suffered spousal abuse, only to give birth to another generation of females destined to experience gender inequality.
Yet, the evening does not get maudlin as Ms. Shreck’s history is replete with poignant punchlines that underscore the multitude of ironies womenkind has endured. Still, though Ms. Schreck is charming and her discourse is filled with jocularity, her play is an angry protest, a catastrophe told via a comedy. Her message is clear: even in this day and age, if you are not a wealthy, white, male landowner like the framers of the Constitution – you are its likely victim. All our social advances, new rights, and freedoms are potentially threatened by a murky document that is left to the interpretation by a panel appointed by the powerful. If this seems dark – it is. But Ms. Schreck expresses hope for our complex document as is demonstrated by the night’s closing scene: an actual debate between herself and a girl teenager, who, like she once did, has won a similar “What the Constitution Means to Me” speech-writing contest.
Watching a young mind apply our 232-year-old list of commandments to their contemporary life is thrilling. You realize that perhaps the document’s lack of definition might be its most enduring asset: in the right hands, it can, indeed, be that great equalizer — that living breathing document so vital for a living breathing America. (What The Constitution Means photos by Joan Marcus). constitutionbroadway.com