![]() It’s essentially an out-of-town tryout, the kind of production that producers and marketers want you to think of as “Broadway-bound.”īut then plenty of big new musicals that describe themselves as Broadway-bound never make it there. The new musical, based on a modest, mawkish 2007 movie that starred a young Freddie Highmore as an orphaned musical prodigy determined to find his parents, comes to Aurora with commercial backing, a cast of New York–based actors, and direction by Tony winner John Doyle. And having done so, we might suspect Signature saw the writing on the wall. That means Chicago-area audiences are getting the first public look at August Rush. By the time Signature announced its full 2018–2019 season two months later, though, it had dropped its commitment to the show, citing scheduling issues. Right now, there are two warring shows: a truthful depiction of how life often pulls us apart and we can only hope that the universe shows us a way beyond our own mistakes - there’s your conflict, folks! - and a boring, conventional, melodramatic tale of escape from the evil machinations of two improbable nasties.When it was first announced in February of 2018, the world premiere of August Rush: The Musical was to be a co-production between Virginia’s Signature Theatre and Aurora’s Paramount, bowing first in Arlington before transferring here. But they haven’t found their emotive key. ![]() That will need to be reflected in Scott Pask’s set and Ann Hould-Ward’s costumes these designs are artful, distinct and wisely metaphoric in their simplicity. ![]() This piece could also be a powerful declaration of the healing power of music and its ability to put a grieving, confused, determined kid on the path to happiness. That’s a lovely and perfectly viable idea, if we feel the tug of their love and the need of their child, but we have to know more about his parents, and, of course, their kid’s journey back to them. If you’re a fan of “Once,” you might think of this story as imagining what would have happened if a American version of the Irish Guy and Czech Girl had made love and had a kid, only to lose him. Musicals are always better off when they are less melodramatic than their source material “August Rush” makes the mistake of doubling down, of actually losing complexity in its storytelling. In Kirsten Sheridan’s film, the Wizard (a more malevolent version of Dickens’ Fagin who exploits kid musicians on the street and stands in the way of the central quest) was played by Robin Williams, an actor whom you could never hate for long. Alas, the sum of this ill-conceived doubling ends up feeling like you’re watching the return of Page’s Green Goblin in the musical “ Spider-Man,” which is not a character referent you want in a musical like this one. In fairness to Hickok, the show seems written that way. In contrast with the parents, who are forged with honesty, both villainous characters are wildly over-played by John Hickok, although they feel like they were written for Patrick Page. The piece is structured so it has two villains: one is the father of the boy’s loving mother, Lyla (Sydney Shepherd), who tricks her into giving up her newborn boy, even though she loves Lewis (George Abud), his likable dad. In this fractured moment, we all long to be made more whole. If he can instill a sense of the universe working to reunite this fractured, lost family, of humans reaching across a void to find their own, the lost piece of their souls, he might well have a deeply emotional and timely musical. Look hard and you can see Doyle building a kind of musical Manhattan cityscape of sound and movement. Some of the finished sections, which are few, actually are quite extraordinary - the show has a look that lands somewhere between Doyle’s “Company” and the masterful musical “Once,” with which it shares a potential emotional vocabulary. It is a beautiful idea for the stage and there are some big performing talents in the show. This Broadway director is, of course, known for his use of actor-musicians and, if you can visualize the future, you can see how Doyle is well suited to material that, theatrically, needs to explore how an adolescent musical prodigy (played with courage by Jack McCarthy) might detect the sounds of the loving musician parents who gave him up (or were forced to give him up) when their lives were young and unstable. So far, there is the beginning of a highly creative staging from the director John Doyle.
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