Once at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater
The new musical Once, based on the Academy Award-winning film about an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant who bond over music over one week together, is perhaps defined by what’s going on onstage as the audience files into the theater. Sure, the house lights are on, and people wait patiently for the show to begin just as they would anywhere else, but before the audience’s eyes a full-on jamboree is underway up on the dais. The actors jump and dance and pluck at stringed instruments in a tight cluster, surrounded by audience members, who are freely allowed to meander up among them.
Yes, in this show the actors play the instruments, and even the lowliest supporting character lugs a bass as he delivers his lines. This seems to be because the show’s calling card is bare-bones, less than fancy, simplistic delivery of the story. Is this a good thing? Maybe not, but it’s given just as well as it can be given what it’s got going for it.
Guy (Steve Kazee), a depressed Irish musician (although I guess that’s redundant), is considering giving up his music after his mother’s death and his abandonment by his girlfriend. However, wouldn’t you know it, he’s brought out of his brooding, mysterious sulk by a (supposedly) beautiful Czech immigrant, Girl (Cristin Milioti), who convinces him to fix her broken vacuum cleaner and record what she’s sure will be a hit song in her burly friend Billy (Paul Whitty)’s music shop. And so it begins.
It seems like a recipe for an unlikely hit. There’s one immobile set, which resembles a bar in the musical’s setting of Dublin, functioning as at least three other locations, and backed by the bare, uncovered brick walls of the theater. It features the traditional Celtic melodies of yore accompanied by little old men playing mandolins, and long, sweeping dances punctuated by unorthodox lighting that leaves the viewer dazed and confused. Sounds like what I like to call hipster bait.
But it’s not enough. There’s something about Once that is cold and uninviting, almost dead. It’s not as warm or open as the film was, mainly because the film employed cinema verite and accessible actors (Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who also wrote the music and lyrics for the musical adaptation) to bring the audience into the film, while the actors in the musical seem like a haughty clique, too good to let their fans into their world.
If the cast members were smart they’d see it’s not enough to be great singers and great instrumentalists, which, undoubtedly, they are. You must employ a dynamic, a pattern, to draw people in to the story and character development, a feat Once comes close to achieving, ironically, only once, when Girl brings Guy to visit her apartment to meet her fellow Czech mother, daughter, and roommates (Anne L. Nathan, Ripley Sobo/Mackayla Twiggs, Will Connolly, Elizabeth A. Davis, and Lucas Papaelias respectively). They employ a method of portraying those who hail from the Czech Republic effectively—less humor is more. (A recurring catchphrase of the six is “I’m always serious. I’m Czech.") When it’s first expressed by Girl it’s a little disconcerting, but when seen as a form of camaraderie by a group of, frankly, quite funny actors, it’s almost hysterical. However, when their traditional, vibrant Czech song ends it’s back to the grey boredom of Ireland.
It’s a truly dull place, Dublin, or so the musical leads me to believe, and even when the characters try to counteract it by declaring their love for their “beautiful” city, I don’t buy it. I’d remind the flat group of people around whom Once revolves in what city they’re performing, and then ask them to compare. I’m sure they’d be disappointed with the results.
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