New Angles on the American Musical From "Copperfield!" "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" "The Heart" "I Became We"

Wither the American musical?  I know that sounds pretentious but it also seems to be the question everyone is now asking. Even the current issue of The New Yorker magazine has jumped into the debate with its piece “Why the American Musical Refuses to Die” (click here to read what they say). Part of the hang wringing and head scratching has been prompted by the rising cost of putting on these shows (the average cost of a Broadway musical was under $1 million in 1976 but has now risen to around $15 million) and part is due to the artistic drive to do something new.  

Some promising ideas about what to do may be coming from a bunch of shows I recently saw that, in their own ways, are wrestling with those questions and trying to offer answers that will both pull in audiences (hopefully some of them under 60) and push the art form forward (maybe even doing so less expensively). 

Two of them—Copperfield! and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—seem to be hedging their bets: basing their books on proven stories and crafting their scores around familiar genres but they’re also borrowing a page from Paul Sills’ storybook-style of theatermaking that favors stripped-down staging and actors breaking the fourth wall to narrate the action; and another page is from director John Doyle’s even more contemporary—and cheaper to produce—technique of having actors double as a show’s musicians.  One of those shows worked for me and one less so.

Charles Dickens may be my all-time favorite author and “David Copperfield,”  the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel that he published in 1850 is my favorite of his many works. So I was primed to see this new musical version that is now playing at The Duke on 42nd Street.  But its creator Jeffrey Scharf, who wrote the show’s book, music and lyrics, may have bitten off more than he can chew. Scharf hasn’t created a bad show but rather a generic one that seems like it might have drawn a B- if it had been a BMI Workshop assignment to musicalize a well-known property.

Part of what has always made Dickens so special is his ability to combine his deep interest in the social issues of his day (income inequality, a corrupt legal system, child abuse) and his delight in making people laugh, mainly through the shenanigans of the colorful characters he created. Scharf’s book hits all the major points in the novel and crams in all the characters but it isn’t clear why he’s telling us this story now. That might be O.K. if his show was simply amusing in its own right but, alas, it isn’t. And the score is so similarly undistinguished that it might have been used for any show from 1956 to 1996. 

None of this has stopped Copperfield!’s backers from putting together a fine-looking production with a multi-level set and period-appropriate costumes. Director Gabriel Barre keeps the action moving even if the acting ability of the 13-member ensemble—who, to be fair, are playing multiple characters—varies (although Bobby Conte provides a solid anchor in the title role) but they all get big thumbs up for how well they all play multiple instruments. 

The actor-musicians in The Public Theater production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button struck me as equally impressive music makers and, as a whole, more accomplished actors. But that may be because the show they’re in is simply a better one. 

It’s based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story (and the 2008 Brad Pitt movie) about a man who, born as a 70-year-old, ages in reverse, growing younger each year until he declines into the oblivion of infancy. But Jethro Compton, who not only wrote the book and lyrics but directed the show and designed its minimal but flexible set, has taken Fitzgerald’s basic idea and created a completely different story, turning it into a meaningful post-pandemic meditation on the illusions of time and the sustaining power of love that wowed theatergoers in London where it won three Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical of 2025 (click here to read more about the origins of the show).

An American cast has replaced the British one that ran on the West End and it would be hard to find a better Benjamin than Andrew Durand, who not only convincingly reverse ages without the help of makeup or significant costume changes but brings a sweet melancholy to the role. Compton’s version moves the story from pre-Civil War Baltimore to a small Cornish fishing village in England beginning around the time of the first World War and centers Benjamin’s journey around his love for a woman named Elowen, beautifully played by Kelsee Kimmel. 

Along the way Benjamin engages with a cast of eccentric characters that might do Dickens proud. Some accept him, some, including his parents, see him as a freak (tolerance for people who are different is a major subtheme) but regardless Benjamin is constantly aware that for him time is winding down. 

This could be depressing except that Compton has partnered with the composer Darren Clark, who wrote a score teeming with the defiantly joyous sounds of Celtic music that have animated sea shanties and folk ditties for centuries. It’s hard to keep your own toes from tapping to that music. And as I watched this lovely show, it was hard for me to keep from smiling, even if at times ruefully as it reminded me of my own ticking clock.

The other two shows I saw—I Became We and The Heart—have found ways to stretch the definition of a musical even further. An onstage Steinway piano was the sole instrument in I Became We, a wholly original show that opened this past week at the Atlantic Theater’s Linda Gross Theater with a book and lyrics by the playwright Mona Pirnot and music and lyrics by the composer Jack D. Coen (click here to listen to an interview with them). 

Pirnot subscribes to the autofiction style of storytelling that weaves together real-life autobiographical experiences (some really mundane) with fictional flourishes to create a thematic narrative. Her previous works have dealt with the trauma of coping with a severely ill relative and the challenges of working as a contemporary artist. This time out the theme is Pirnot’s mid-life crisis over whether or not to have a baby. But what sets this first-person story apart is that it’s told by a 16-member choir of classically trained singers, all dressed in formal attire, standing on risers with music in hand and singing the hell out of the score.

The songs Pirnot and Coen, who also conducts the choir, have composed range from the intentionally funny opening number that begins “I saw a segment on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ called, ‘What Do You Know About the Female Body?’” to gorgeous meditative arias. The singers who performed in solos, duets, quartets and as a group were all fantastic and I was happy to see each given complete bios in the Playbill. Director Sarah Benson’s main contribution may have been the decision to project the lyrics on a screen positioned above the choir, which I greatly appreciated because it meant that none of the often very witty lyrics are missed.

However, while I am a fan of this clever new approach to a musical, I have to admit that I found the subject of one woman’s decision to have a baby to be a touch too solipsistic. But the entire song cycle runs a tidy 70 minutes, most critics have been charmed by it and I’m happy to join in the applause for what turned out to be a truly entertaining chamber musical in every sense of the word.

Still, the show that really knocked me out was The Heart, an exhilarating new musical that just opened at the Roundabout Theater's Laura Pels Theatre. It's centered around the unlikely subject of a transplanted heart with a book by Kait Kerrigan and a techno music score by the husband-and-wife team of Anne and Ian Eisendrath that provides a steady and propulsive beat that aptly mimics those of the heart. 

The story, based on a French novel, begins with the fatal car accident of a 19-year-old surfer and then follows the journey of his still healthy heart through vignettes that involve his divorced parents who have to make the agonizing decision to donate their son’s heart, the transplant coordinators who have only a limited time to find the right recipient for it, the ailing 50-year-old woman who had given up hope of getting a heart in time to save her life and the members of the medical team that performs the procedure.

That’s a lot to pack into 90-minutes and yet the songs (both Kerrigan and the Eisendraths are credited with the lyrics) are so skillful, Christopher Ashley’s direction is so sharp and the cast led by Joaquina Kalukango as the anguished mom, Heidi Blickenstaff as the anxious recipient and Drew Gehling as the cocky surgeon are all so specific in their acting choices that each character comes vividly to life. 

The entire creative team is equally in sync. Mandy Moore’s choreography is minimal but still manages to convey the urgency of the situation. Similarly, Lucy Mackinnon’s video projections are mainly expressionistic but their images totally encapsulate the pulse of the endeavor. 

But it was mainly the music that most excited me. Hip-hop has been sneaking into more shows in the wake of Hamilton and pop-rock keeps popping up in jukebox musicals but to have a show so animated by electronic dance music—while still making room for more traditional genres when needed—is a reminder that the musical cannot only survive but thrive as a contemporary art form.

Some critics have complained that The Heart is little more than a fancy PSA to get people to sign up as organ donors. I suppose there is some truth in that. I learned a lot of facts about the whole organ donation process. But I was also moved to tears by the show (I laughed some too; it's a bighearted show). And so how can I not cheer a show that has found such a fresh way to appeal to both my head and, yes, my heart.