Dancers, Rock Stars, and Spies in a Musical of His Own Making

My Life is a Musical at the Bay Street Theater

Howie Michael Smith and ensemble in My Life is a Musical.

            A common—and cliché, at this point—complaint about musicals is the implausibility of the characters breaking into song to express their emotions.  In every heavy-handed musical theater parody on sitcoms, in movies, and, less often, in stage shows, there is at least one moment when an actor steps forward into the spotlight, ready to deliver his solo, and a fellow cast member snipes, “Why are you singing?”  So it’s a relief, at least, to see a clever conceit based on this eternal complaint brought to life adequately in Adam Overett’s new musical, My Life is a Musical, running at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor through August 31^st. 

            Parker (Howie Michael Smith) is a mild-mannered accountant (somehow this character has become a musical theater mainstay) who, since childhood, has been plagued by the people around him bursting into song and dance at inopportune moments.  No one but Parker can see or hear the live, 24/7 musical, and Parker learns to cope by avoiding “emotional situations” and “new people, since they usually introduce themselves with a song.”  Through an administrative misstep by his firm, Parker gets sent out on the road as a tour accountant with a band called Zeitgeist, fronted by the egomaniacal Zach (Justin Matthew Sargent) and managed by the ambitious, easily hurt JT (Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone).  Parker falls quickly for JT (as someone who’s been avoiding people his whole life might be wont to do) and, noting the band’s awfulness, quickly finds a solution.  Parker will transcribe the songs he hears Zach singing every day—and Zach, not knowing he’s been singing at all, will have a set-list for his concerts.  (The sequence in which Parker first tries his hand at this fakery, covered by the song “Zach’s Rise to Fame,” is an example of the creative staging and writing that make the good parts of this musical great.)  Cyrano-style, Parker insists that Zach claim authorship of the songs to avoid revealing his perceived weirdness to the world.  But the band is pursued by a self-serious music journalist named, among other things, Randy (the fantastic Robert Cuccioli), who senses that something is rotten in the house of Zeitgeist.  Hilarity, as in most musicals, is bound to ensue.

            The quality of the show varies wildly from scene to scene.  The opening’s exposition—from the curtain’s rise ‘til Parker begins his songwriting scheme—is almost aggressively banal.  But from there on in, the fun increases exponentially, up to a disappointing ending.  Mr. Smith, as the reserved Parker, is mostly generic, fun only in his explosive reactions to the music that won’t stop following him around.  Mr. Sargent, as Zach, is very funny, and his first number, “Zach’s Song,” is a highlight—it’s a pity his character is underexplored.  It’s Robert Cuccioli, playing the faux-mysterious Randy, who steals the show.  The character is written (thanks to Mr. Overett, who’s responsible for book, lyrics, and music) in a malaprop-ridden style that makes him the funniest thing about My Life.  Slapstick seems to follow Randy, as in a scene at his hotel (called On the Corner, but set in the middle of a block) reminiscent of something out of a Howard Hawks film.  It also helps that Randy’s signature song, “What Have You Got to Hide,” is by far the score’s best-written.

            The show’s predicament can be best expressed by its final scene, when Parker finally reveals his secret.  The reaction is immediately accepting—no questions, no requests for elaboration.  This seems odd if only because Parker’s music-driven life is supposed to exist in the real world, a world where people react oddly if he tells them he’s living on, as he puts it “a 1950s MGM soundstage.”  In the world the musical presents during its dreary exposition, if Parker told anyone he heard music and saw dancing someone would institutionalize him, or at least medicate him.  But it’s easy to understand why Mr. Overett went this way.  Rather than being a parody of musicals, My Life is a Musical is trying to be real, old-fashioned musical theater (albeit with an up-tempo rock score in which most of the songs blend together).  Better, Mr. Overett, to stick to and heighten the parody.  A show can’t be constantly self-referential and stand on its own at the same time.