New Twenty-Minute Musicals
Blood Countess; Time Travel Makes Complete Sense; Someone Else;
My Robot Boyfriend
What an interesting concept and program. The Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts sponsored a series of master classes where teams of emerging theater writers, composers, and lyricists got together and brainstormed during the summer with the goal of creating twenty-minute musicals. On Monday evening, I saw four of the finished, or almost finished, products. These were not fully realized performances but rather readings with minimal staging. As such, there were a few rough patches but it was pretty cool to see these efforts. There was also a panel of judges, though this was not a competition.
Blood Countess was a capsulized version of the Elizabeth Báthory story. She was a late-16th-, early-17th-century Hungarian countess who was accused of murdering hundreds of young women, even going so far as to bathe in their blood. Touching on the vampire legends, it was a lot of history to squeeze into twenty minutes but it came off pretty well. I liked the music a lot. The vocal lines were fine and the level of composition was quite good.
That was not the case, in my opinion, with My Robot Boyfriend. Here, the melodies were a bit spikier (maybe because of the high-tech nature of the setting?) and, for the most part, the vocal lines were doubled in the piano part. It almost made me think that this was for guiding the singers, as this piece was the least fully formed (again, in my opinion). I loved the premise of a gal creating a robot and programming it to fall in love with her. But the plot line of the Mega Power Company and the parallel plot line of the dating app made things very confusing. The bright spot compositionally was the song “What Is the Algorithm of Love?” sung by Charlie, the robot.
A plot twist of body switching made Someone Else a rather interesting piece. That said, it helped to explain one part of the main love relationship, but it came a little too late. What seemed to be a mother/daughter relationship at the beginning of the show turned out to be an almost proposal of marriage. What made it even more interesting, as we learned during feedback from the judges, was that the role of what many of us perceived to be the daughter was actually written for a man, but had to be shifted to a woman at the last minute—everybody seemed to agree that the lesbian angle worked well and should maybe be kept, while trying to clear up or show better that the first scene was not actually mother/daughter.
About that feedback. The group of seven or eight judges gave thoughtful, mostly positive, and very helpful feedback to each of the four sets of writers/composers/
lyricists. All of the judges were very supportive of each project. It was enjoyable to listen to and to compare their reactions with my own.
Which brings us to Time Travel Makes Complete Sense. This piece was flat out funny. And had really good vocal harmonies, which is always a big plus in my book. Crystal and Sterling are on a first date. She’s not sure she wants to stay through it, so she takes a quick break by going to the ladies’ room. Unbeknownst to her, there is a woman in one of the stalls who overhears Crystal talking to herself and trying to decide what to do about the date. Unbeknownst to us, the other woman is Future Crystal. FC gets a big laugh when, trying to explain the future of Crystal to Crystal, she flings her arm in an arc over her head and says, “Flash of light!” Another really funny bit is where FC and Crystal, who are moving in unison, slap their faces while FC says something along the lines of, “Snap out of it.” And then they both say, “Ow!” When Crystal asks why it hurt FC, FC explains that they really are the same person. The slap is funny again when it occurs with FC2 and Crystal. Yes, all in all there are four Future Crystals plus one Future Sterling. And yes, at one point all five Crystals do ‘the slap’ and it’s just as funny all over again. And this is without even going into the parallel plot lines of a possibly successful (but possibly not) Ravioli Restaurant (Crystal’s idea), which may (or may not) feature a marinara fountain, and Nüfood (Sterling’s idea) which may (or may not) be a cure for world hunger. I’m telling you, this was funny stuff with fun songs and great harmonies. Can you tell that this one was my favorite?
And for those of you wondering about the title of the event, Across a Crowded Room refers to the original master class, where everyone was meeting for the first time and figuring how to team up and begin the creative process. As to the performances, most of you know that I do not approach this blog from a reviewer standpoint. That said, the performers were all good but a few of them really stood out by being virtual chameleons and appearing in multiple shows. Alina Gattrell, Alison J. Freeman, and Kate Leonard appeared in three of the four. Laura Cetti appeared in two of the four. And Ms. Freeman and Ms. Leonard were lyricist and book writer, respectively, for Blood Countess. There was a lot of talent on that stage, as well as a lot of experience coming from the judges. This is the type of thing I would gladly see again.
And I will! Another four twenty-minute musicals will be on display on Mon., Oct. 1, and I already have my reservation. Win-win.
ConcertMeister
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