Recipe for a musical:
*Mix four talented humans in huge city (yes, NYC).
*Allow them to meet.
*Step back to allow chemistry and fate to complete the work.
Ordinary Days, with music and lyrics by Adam Gwon, does just that, and in doing so, weaves a simple tale spun by chance encounters into a meditation about life.
The intimate confines of The Helen (kinda in the “basement” of Playhouse Square) proved the perfect setting for Gwon’s tender musical. Part of a continuing collaboration between Playhouse Square and the Baldwin Wallace Music Theatre and Arts Management programs, the production featured a minimalist design by Russell Borski and stage management by Jack-Anthony Ina. Music Director Matthew Webb accompanied the vocalists via an upright piano set stage right. (The piano also served as a coffee bar when needed.)
Gwon, in a talkback with Director Victoria Bussert after the Saturday evening performance, said the music came before he knew the plot. It did not show. The cast — all of whom anticipate living in NYC once they graduate — seemed to have no problem melding song and story. Crafting a new life in a strange city can be the stuff of their dreams (and nightmares).
This sung-through musical (nobody talks, everybody sings — that right there might impede communication in real life) is double-cast.
On Saturday night, I saw the Uptown Cast which featured Anthony Mejia as Warren (an underemployed artist) frantically passing out 4 X 6 inspirational note cards to passersby while singing “One by One by One.”
Warren’s efforts are ignored and rejected until Deb, a distracted graduate student (Kenna Wilson), takes one and stuffs it into her purse before she hurries away. Poor Deb, we learn later, is trying to navigate graduate school (as she warbles in “Dear Professor Thompson”).
Meanwhile the two pedestrians who ignored Warren are also swallowed up with problems. The optimistic Jason (played by Luke Henson) and the distant Claire (Jessie Kirtley) are busy trying to define their relationship as they sing “The Space Between,” “Let Things Go,” and “I’m Trying.” Jason believes (rightly) that Claire is hiding something.
When Mejia’s compellingly earnest Warren tossed notecards off a high perch, the falling papers helped Deb, Claire and Jason see life in a welcome new way as notecards covered stage and audience in a flood of blue, yellow, green, pink and purple. It was not accidental that the fluttering papers resembled those falling from the Twin Towers on September 11.
Batches of advice on the cards included pearls such as “Opportunity is like an express train; there’s always another one on its way” and “Change your socks and your perspective daily” and “Take the scenic route. Life is not a metered ride.” I salute the behind-the-scenes crew who made hundreds, maybe thousands, of notes to rain down near show’s end. And I salute those who stayed behind and cleaned them up too. It was delightful.
Bottom Line: Impressive performances from multi-talented performers. The appealing student quartet melded Ordinary Day’s character sketches into a compelling and coherent whole. The musical itself (and its celebration of random chance) proved positive and refreshing. Looking forward to following Mejia, Wilson, Henson, and Kirtley as they pursue their own careers and NYC life — -or, as one note that fell near me said, “On the road of Life, Let no Obstacle, Great or Small, Stand in your way.”
One Response to “THEATER REVIEW: “Ordinary Days” @ Playhouse Square by Laura Kennelly”
EDWARD MYCUE
HERE’S A PRETTY PLAYLISTING FOR TODAYS:
There’s more here than meets eye, ear, back of your mind?
Growth, maturity, including tenderly, preciously falling
in love, developing strengths in difficult journeying isn’t newer than some 1950’s and 1960’s musicals that such as
LITTLE MARY SUNSHINE and THE FANTASTIKS assuring love and struggle are worthwhile, reassuringly.
Then in the 1990’s there was RENT where love and hope
win over disease, discrimination– love + guts triumphing. With good narrative, clever lyrics, swell music, and not more truth that will sink a date night usually plus with
maybe bits of Dantesque aggravation and little about dying in your own vomit mean you can get theater success depending how much of a boomerang are the trends of
shower, rain, storm, sun battling an unmistakable clock
because there is no traipsing back. Itself’s a musical play.
There’s more here than meets eye, ear, back of your mind.