Hello, Again

Musical (1993)
Book, lyrics and music by Michael John Lachiusa

With Jared Dixon (The Husband, The Senator), Lauren Eicher (The Whore), Sean Patrick Gibbons (The Soldier, The Writer), Andrew Spatafora (The College Boy, The Young Thing), Sarah Talbot (The Young Wife), Aubin Wise (The Nurse, The Actress)

There is no real plot to this show, mostly a series of duets about erotic interchange mostly gone awry, but it is so well done, so beautifully sung, played and acted, that the lack of a plot is not really any issue at all.

The black box at the Boston Center for the Arts where the show takes place is set up as a cabaret, with the audience seated at tables around the stage. The show is featured as immersive, which can call up a red light for those who might be phobic about audience-involved theater. Don’t worry – the actors are close and sometimes wind up sitting at your table (but facing inward) and they do not drag any audience members up for highlighted dramatic humiliation. One can stay safely and contentedly in one’s seat.

There are a raft – ten – of these erotic interchanges, each keyed, in some sense, to a different era ranging through different decades of the twentieth century. Soldiers going off to wars, husbands and wives, whores, writers, college boys, nurses, actresses, politicians all get linked together in one way or another, on land and sometimes on sea.

The series is linked sequentially by a partner who straddles two juxtaposed scenes. The first is The Whore & The Soldier, the second is The Soldier and The Nurse, the third is The Nurse & The College Boy… you get the idea. Both heterosexual and homosexual interchanges are featured.

There is a little suggestion, in the music, of the difference in time periods, but most of the music is of a style unto itself, kind of neo-Kurt-Weillian. It has nothing to do with most Broadway-style composition, either of the current Stephen Schwartz mode or the former Rogers and Hammerstein mode. If there is a musical relative, it is a distant cousin of Sondheim and a close cousin of Kurt Weill. The music is shadowy and curious, not likely to be hummed on the way home, but striking and imaginative.

The cast does a superlative job, especially in the short run of this show, handling the offbeat melodies and harmonies. It is not an easy score to master, but everyone manages the challenge remarkably well. The quality of the singing is universally quite impressive, with some really outstanding voices.

There is constant eroticism in this show, so don’t plan on bringing your favorite 4H chapter or day care class to it. If, however, you have cable TV and have turned it on in the last decade or two you are likely to have seen enough so that nothing in this show will be a shock.

This is, I believe, the first musical outing of the new, very promising Bridge Repertory Theater. It is an ambitious undertaking by this young troupe, but they rise to the occasion admirably. This is indeed a group to watch.

– BADMan