It took me awhile to get the double meaning of the title In
Transit, the a cappella musical that opened last Sunday at Circle in the Square.
The show is set primarily in the subway so I got that transit reference right
away. But it also focuses on a supposedly random group of people (although we
later discover that they're connected in ways that I suppose I shouldn't spoil)
and their lives are in flux, or in transit. Alas, neither meaning worked for me.
For starters, who wants to see a story set in the subway? Most of us New Yorkers consider the subway a
necessary evil and want to spend as little time there as we can. And tourists
are unlikely to get jokes that reference things like Dr. Zizmor, the now-retired
dermatologist whose ads were a regular fixture in subway cars.
The people populating the show's cars aren't likely to
draw ticket buyers either. By coincidence I saw In Transit on the same day I'd
listened to an oral history about the making of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling
Bee on the Broadway Backstory podcast (which by the way if you aren't listening
to, you should be listening to; click here to check it out).
The characters in Spelling Bee are a motley crew too but
each has a distinctive personality and set of problems. Plus they all share
the common goal of wanting to win the bee, which binds them together and gives
the audience a rooting interest in them.
By contrast, the main characters in In Transit are just a
bunch of people who all take the subway. But they could just as easily have
bumped into one another at a Starbucks.
Primarily white and entirely young and middle class,
they include an actress juggling auditions and a day job as an office temp, a
laid-off junior exec who can only find work at Staples, a woman trying to get
over being ditched by the guy she moved to New York to be with and a gay couple
planning to get married although one still isn't out to his mother.
None of them—or anyone else in the show—rises beyond the
level of stereotype. When the gay couple goes to Texas to reveal their marriage
plans to the closeted one's family, I knew right away what his mother was going
to say and what his fire-and-brimstone minister was going to say and they both
said exactly those things.
Meanwhile, back in New York, a black subway musician (played
at the performance my friend Jessie and I saw by beat-box master Chesney Snow,
who alternates the role with Steven "HeaveN" Cantor) provides the
rhythmic beats for the instrument-free numbers and fills the role of the Magical
Negro who seems to exist only to dispense wise advice—and even free train
fares—to the confused yuppies.
The book, music and lyrics for In Transit were written by Kristen
Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan and Sara Wordsworth, four friends
who sang a cappella together and began developing the show 15 years ago, long
before Anderson-Lopez broke out with the song "Let It Go," which she
and her husband, Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon composer Robert Lopez, wrote
for the movie "Frozen" (click here to read more about her).
In Transit's songs are fine and a few are even better than that,
although I found myself wishing that a couple of them had been accompanied by
instruments instead of the vocal harmonizing arranged by Deke Sharon, who did
the same for the "Pitch Perfect" movies (click here to read moreabout him).
But what In Transit really needed was an experienced book
writer or at least a strong dramaturge who might have helped craft a
compelling narrative. Director Kathleen Marshall does what she can by keeping
the show moving. Donyale Werle's set centers around a treadmill that serves as
the train tracks and a conveyor belt for the bits of furniture that move in and
out to signal scene changes.
And the top-notch cast, lead by Margot Seibert, James Snyder, Justin Guarini, Telly Leung and Erin Mackey, races on and off and jumps into
and out of costumes (kudos to Clint Ramos for one spectacular dress, worn with
just the right swag by Moya Angela) as they play the main characters as well as
supporting roles, all the while harmonizing.
They're all ingratiating and in terrific voice. If only
they'd been given something to sing about.
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