"Nobody Loves You" at the Tony Kiser Theater
Second
Stage has picked another winner in “Nobody Loves You,” a musical by Itamar
Moses and Gaby Alter that had its premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe last spring
(and runs through August 11th in New York). The music is terrifically peppy and bright,
the lyrics are surprisingly witty and well-formed, and the cast takes to the
story like fish to water. This show is
an achievement.
In the
all-too-real present, ontology Ph.D candidate Jeff (the skillfully whiny Bryan
Fenkart) has just lost his shallow girlfriend Tanya (Leslie Kritzer) over
differing opinions on Tanya’s favorite TV show, also called “Nobody Loves
You.” On the show, a complex combination
of audience votes and mix CD-bestowment (the rules are never exactly made clear)
results in the success of one couple out of fifteen original contestants. (The other thirteen are told “Pack up your
bags and leave the house, because nobody loves you” by host Byron, an ebullient
moron played with aplomb by Heath Calvert.)
Tanya loves the show, but Jeff—in the vein of many real-life
counterparts—can’t stand the construction the show calls “reality.” But when Jeff finds out his ex is auditioning
for the show’s next season, he can’t resist doing the same to try to win her
back. Unfortunately, his cynicism
appeals to the producers, and Tanya doesn’t.
He’s left on the show alone, doing his best to expose the show’s lies to
the world with the help of production assistant (and, eventually, love interest—spoiler
alert) Jenny (Aleque Reid).
Some of the
songs are almost inordinately clever.
One of the show’s utility players, Rory O’Malley, plays three parts, but
his most entertaining is that of Evan, the world’s biggest fan of “NLY” (the TV
show). Early on in the show, his
inspired performance of the excellently written “The Twitter Song” lets us know
that this show will not be a flashy piece lacking intricacy, like one of the
shows it portrays. Jenny and Jeff’s
first duet, “So Much to Hate,” is so offbeat and yet somehow still magnificent
that it feels like the beginning of a new class of love songs.
And “Nobody
Loves You” (the musical) subverts our expectations at every turn. Jeff and Jenny is not the classic love story,
and the contestants do not, as we might expect, immediately pair up and remain
with their partners for the remainder of the show. Sometimes, as on a reality program, people
who were seemingly meant to become important players are simply voted off. “Nobody Loves You” is real. That word is thrown around a lot during the
musical, in varying forms and with varying degrees of sarcasm, to implicate the
unreality of “NLY” and its ilk. But the
way the characters act, and the way they are portrayed (very well) seems
legitimately real to the audience.
Meanwhile,
behind-the-scenes, the seven-person orchestra plays Mr. Alter’s fuel-injected
numbers flawlessly. The staging is
thought out to the letter (the show is directed by Michelle Tattenbaum) and the
lighting and sets (by Ben Stanton and Mark Wendland respectively) create a very
real environment for the show’s studios and various other settings to coexist
believably.
This musical is about the “Truman Show”-esque creepiness
of the average reality TV show (at one point, Jenny sits in a booth above “NLY”’s
“house,” controlling the weather, electricity, and other circumstances of the
contestants’ courtships), but a couple of the relationships this TV show
creates actually work out, and end with the contestants living happily ever
after. So what does this say about Jeff’s
initial cynicism? Are we meant to
believe that he was correct to begin with, or that reality TV can indeed help
people find love? Much like reality TV,
it is up to the viewer to decide which of the messages of “Nobody Loves You”
are real,
and which are fabricated for the sake of story.
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