With Broadway plays and musicals tumbling about Times Square in hopes of awards recognition a conundrum: Can the best play of the season also be the best musical of the season? For Tony, Drama Desk, etc. voters, unlikely, check one box in one column only. And there’s yet more to come in an unprecedented shower of shows this April, an opening a night or so it seems as I see my critic friends more than my kids. Still, I’m calling it early: David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, fresh from its acclaimed Off Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons, is the best play and the best musical of the 2023-2024 season. How can that be?
Consider first what the show is. (Other than a play with music, or a musical with a play.) We’re in a recording studio in Sausalito, CA, in the mid-70s. An unnamed band (not to be confused with Fleetwood Mac, but not not to be confused with Fleetwood Mac, either) has a No. 1 single and a Top 10 album riding the charts. The band, three guys and two women, assembles to record the followup. They are an American couple, guitarist, singer, and producer Peter (Tom Pecinka) and singer Diana (Sarah Pidgeon), who have cross-pollinated with Brits Simon (Chris Stack), a drummer, and a second couple, singer and pianist Holly (Juliana Canfield) and bassist Reg (Will Brill). Catering to their needs and whims are sound engineer Grover (Eli Gelb) and his assistant Charlie (Andrew R. Butler). Early on, as new songs take shape, Columbia Records decides to throw money and time at the new recording. The latter component is key as everyone hunkers down…for what turns into two years of painstaking, agonizing, frustrating, and occasionally beautiful artistic collaboration and creation. (Rumors, anyone? Tusk?)
And we feel the passage of time over the play’s four acts and three hours and fifteen minutes of running time. I’m not sure what a rollercoaster of ennui is but Stereophonic is a rollercoaster of ennui, and I mean that in the best possible way. Dull this isn’t, and all credit to director Daniel Aukin for maintaining a deliberate pace that never slackens into boredom. Adjmi’s work bears some resemblance to the long, single-set, sink-in plays of Annie Baker and Stephen Adly Guirgis, and the novelistically precise but improvised-seeming films of Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson (I can visualize the filmmaker behind the Seventies-set Licorice Pizza and Boogie Nights seeing Stereophonic and exclaiming “Why didn’t I think of this?”) Drama is there, as details about the recording, and the relationships, seep in, but nothing that happens tips into melodrama; potential tragedy repeats as ironic comedy in a hurry, and it doesn’t soften the blow of the misogyny or megalomania of the time. Diana is the true leader of the band, with more songs than anyone, but lacks confidence, a flaw that the relentlessly ambitious Peter, her lifelong friend and partner, selfishly exploits. Simon appears to be a laid-back Kris Kristoffersen type but veers in attitude, and holds everyone hostage for six weeks working on his part. Holly despises Reg’s drinking and drugging but as in a pop somg can’t let go as their circumstances change. Meanwhile Grover, who got the job claiming to be The Eagles’ sound engineer…wasn’t, and lives in fear of being caught in the lie (he did get as far as Toto, however). The gnomish Charlie is quickly disillusioned by the band’s antics, which doesn’t really faze them, as they can’t remember his name anyway. (It doesn’t help that with the coffee maker permanently on the fritz everyone resorts to beer, pot, and a bottomless bag of cocaine to keep going, though the show never stoops to Cheech and Chong humor or lectures about their effects, either.)
Original songs and orchestrations fall to Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire. (Justin Craig is credited for music direction and orchestrations.) This was no easy task, as I think we only hear one (“Masquerade”) in its “Chain”-like entirety. He had to build them, and the actors have perform them, take after take after take, and the verisimilitude is incredible. Musicologists will have a field day sourcing their influences but what we hear stands fully on its own, and they support the show better than the many wan songs deployed for the usual run of movie-into-musical adaptations. I love art that shows how things are made, and I thoroughly enjoyed being schooled in the fits and starts of song production. I’m there for the cast album.
Besides the splendid ensemble cast, writing, direction, and music the entire immersive production sets the “you are there” tone as you enter. Savor the details of David Zinn’s set, Ryan Rumery’s sound, Jiyoun Chang’s lights, Robert Pickens and Katie Gell’s hair and wigs, and Enver Chakartash’s costumes–you’ll feel like a time traveler, returning to a different era of music and mores. And so, Stereophonic…best play of the year? Best musical of the year? Both, whatever…it’s the most “Popdose” show I’ve ever seen, and I urge anyone reading this to book a seat at the Golden immediately.
Comments