As a lifelong fan of musical theater, I support any and all efforts to cultivate new artistic voices within the form. So, when the I heard that the Roundabout Theater would be including the new tuner Ordinary Days as part of its Roundabout Underground series, my interest was piqued.
Ordinary Days has words and music by one Adam Gwon, and let me just say that, although I had significant problems with the show itself, there seemed to be enough quality writing present to make me want to keep an eye on his future work. As for Ordinary Days, well, it plays more like someone's graduate thesis, a promising inaugural effort that nonetheless probably doesn't hold much promise for future development.
Ordinary Days starts off as one of those precious little Off-Broadway musicals, complete with arpeggiated piano accompaniment and the innocuous intent of putting a face on quirky-yet-lovable contemporary New Yorkers. The show begins rather statically with four soliloquies, one to introduce each character. The result is pleasant enough at first, but you'd be hard-pressed to call it innovative or edgy. Of course, not every musical needs to push the boundaries of the form, but Ordinary Days veers all too quickly into the land of undifferentiated and self-consciously introspective ballads, and eventually becomes painfully earnest, falling back on contrived circumstance and artificial emotion.
To be fair, there's some very interesting and amusing character work here, complete with ambitious contextual comedic numbers, particularly those involving Jared Gertner and the delightful Kate Wetherhead. Gertner plays the requisite free spirit who teaches Wetherhead's tightly wound grad student how to stop and smell the roses. There's some genuine humor and emotional honesty is some of Gwon's work for this pair, and Gertner and Wetherhead momentarily shine throughout the show.
SPOILER ALERT: In order to fully explicate my views on this show, it's necessary that I reveal a major plot point below. If you're planning on seeing the show, you may want to read the rest of this review subsequently.
The real trouble lies in the treatment of the show's romantic couple, played here by Hunter Foster and Lisa Brescia. Foster is saddled with the most egregiously bland ballads of the how-can-I-tell-her-that-I-love-her variety, while Brescia has the thankless task of providing subtext to a character for whom Gwon hasn't really provided enough back story. As we'll see, that turns out to be deliberate on Gwon's part, but it doesn't make Brescia's job any easier. It's difficult at first to determine the source of the sturm und drang for this couple. Then it turns out that Gwon has a cheap, manipulative card up his sleeve. He's been holding back on purpose, and the result is irritating, if not downright offensive.
Brescia's character, Claire, is having difficulty committing to budding relationship with Warren, played by Foster. [NOTE: An observant reader correctly informs me that Foster plays a character named Jason, and not Warren. Warren is the name of the other male character in the show. EIKILFM regrets the error.] Throughout the show, Gwon has hinted that there's something awry, but there's something very unsatisfying in the way he continually hints at Claire's ambivalence. Then, toward the end of the show, Gwon reveals all. On the way to a dinner party, Warren has blurted out a marriage proposal to Claire, causing her to run away from him. A few numbers later, Claire leaves a message on Warren's voice-mail confessing as to why she bolted. The song starts with Claire describing a previous romance, which led to a brief but idyllic marriage. Everything was apparently bliss...until the plane struck the first tower.
Really? Really? That's your explanation for why Claire can't commit? Because she lost her first husband on 9/11? In the first place, that's not very credible psychologically. Is she afraid that she'll lose her next husband in a similar once-in-a-millennium occurrence? But second, it's completely inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the show. Nothing in the style of preceding 70 minutes would indicate that such a turn of events would arise from the narrative, and the result is jarring and unsatisfying.
As I said, there was enough in Gwon's work here to pique my interest in his future projects. But Ordinary Days, although it contains moments of genuine pleasure and wit, is ultimately an ordinary show with some extraordinary elements. And not in a good way.
