Current:Home > MyTheater Review: ‘Stereophonic’ is a brilliant ‘Behind the Music’ play on Broadway -Momentum Wealth Path
Theater Review: ‘Stereophonic’ is a brilliant ‘Behind the Music’ play on Broadway
View
Date:2025-04-14 19:58:32
It’s July 1976 in a Northern California recording studio and the rock ‘n’ roll band cutting their latest album is exhausted and wary. The coffee machine is broken. Never mind, there’s always cocaine — and heaps of it.
“That’s not the same thing,” one of the musicians says.
“It’s the exact same thing,” she is told.
So begins “Stereophonic,” one of the most thrilling pieces of theater in years, a play with better songs than most musicals on Broadway and an ensemble that rocks, literally. You won’t need any of their coke to last the three-hour-plus run time.
Playwright David Adjmi tells the story of a Fleetwood Mac-like band with five members — some married, some dating — working on music with two sound engineers over a life-changing year, with personal rifts opening and closing and then reopening. The riffs also change, as songs endure dozens of takes and changes in tempo.
The play, which opened Friday at the Golden Theatre, is a hypernaturalistic meditation on the thrill, and also the danger, of collaborating on art — the compromises, the egos and the joys. It’s an ode not just to the music business but perhaps to the theater world, too.
“Stereophonic” is a very human play, featuring deep moments about love and the pursuit of art interspliced with digressions about dry cleaners and Marlon Brando. We learn to care about each of the five characters and even anticipate their reactions. Will they survive this album intact?
David Zinn’s marvelous set, with the engineers manipulating dials and faders in the office-hangout spot, in front of a glassed-off recording space, allows for multiple conversations at once, including one intense argument completely offstage that the engineers overhear.
The effect is almost to turn the actors into instruments themselves, alternating silence for one or two moments in one scene and in another with their volumes raised high. There is cross-talk, mufflers and even the clunk of machines whirring when a recording is started. It’s the most interesting soundscape since “The Humans.” Kudos to director Daniel Aukin and the nimble cast for making it all so seamless.
Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire, provides the original, layered blues- and folk-based songs — perfect for progressive rockers in the late ‘70s. The songs are instantly funky, head-bobbing bangers and audience members will care about them, too. (What happens to them at the play’s end is a twist.)
An existential angst hangs over this recording studio in Sausalito, California. Long hours in the studio mean the inhabitants lose track of time. They work into the wee hours, forgetting what day they’re in. “What month is this?” one asks.
Outside the studio, we learn this unnamed band is getting famous, but inside there is no escape from microaggressions, breakups and perfectionist demands, all amplified by substance abuse.
The two women in the band — keyboardists and singers played by Sarah Pidgeon and Juliana Canfield — learn to stick up for themselves over the course of the play, while the men — the bassist played by Will Brill and a drummer by Chris Stack — rebel against the dictatorial singer-guitarist, played by Tom Pecinka. Eli Gelb and Andrew R. Butler play the hapless engineers with increasing self-confidence.
Adjmi writes the awful, push-pull fights of couples brilliantly: “Just because I don’t unravel the thread doesn’t mean I don’t know where it is,” one women says to her partner. He also captures with accuracy and wit a scene in which three guys have a random, pot-fueled discussion about houseboats.
Pidgeon’s character, Diana, a budding and gifted singer-songwriter, reveals a profound insecurity, one not helped by her coolly demanding band leader and lover. “I can’t be a rock star and be this stupid,” she says. Unhelpful is her partner: “You can’t ask me to help you and not help you. I can’t do both.”
One of the best moments is when this dysfunctional couple are asked to harmonize together in the studio, sharing the same mic but separated by Canfield’s character. The two on-again-off-again lovers are at each other’s throats — “My skin is crawling. I can’t stand being near you,” Diana hisses at him — until the signal to record begins. Then all three voices beautifully merge into one for the recording. Go figure.
Toward the end, one of the engineers asks Diana why she’d ever consider staying in this noxious band, calling it kind of a nightmare. “This was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Diana replies.
Those in the audience know the feeling.
___
Follow Mark Kennedy online.
veryGood! (79)
Related
- Google unveils a quantum chip. Could it help unlock the universe's deepest secrets?
- California Activists Redouble Efforts to Hold the Oil Industry Accountable on Neighborhood Drilling
- Tesla board members to return $735 million amid lawsuit they overpaid themselves
- Turn Your House Into a Smart Home With These 19 Prime Day 2023 Deals: Ring Doorbell, Fire TV Stick & More
- The Louvre will be renovated and the 'Mona Lisa' will have her own room
- Richard Simmons’ Rep Shares Rare Update About Fitness Guru on His 75th Birthday
- Ryan Reynolds, John Legend and More Stars React to 2023 Emmy Nominations
- Biden administration unveils new U.S. Cyber Trust Mark consumer label for smart home devices
- Costco membership growth 'robust,' even amid fee increase: What to know about earnings release
- Q&A: Cancer Alley Is Real, And Louisiana Officials Helped Create It, Researchers Find
Ranking
- How to watch new prequel series 'Dexter: Original Sin': Premiere date, cast, streaming
- Why Kristin Davis Really Can't Relate to Charlotte York
- Community Solar Is About to Get a Surge in Federal Funding. So What Is Community Solar?
- Ray Liotta Receives Posthumous 2023 Emmy Nomination Over a Year After His Death
- Federal hiring is about to get the Trump treatment
- Scientists Report a Dramatic Drop in the Extent of Antarctic Sea Ice
- NOAA warns X-class solar flare could hit today, with smaller storms during the week. Here's what to know.
- Make Traveling Less Stressful With These 15 Amazon Prime Day 2023 Deals
Recommendation
Woman dies after Singapore family of 3 gets into accident in Taiwan
Encina Chemical Recycling Plant in Pennsylvania Faces Setback: One of its Buildings Is Too Tall
On the Frontlines in a ‘Cancer Alley,’ Black Women Inspired by Faith Are Powering the Environmental Justice Movement
Imagining a World Without Fossil Fuels
US wholesale inflation accelerated in November in sign that some price pressures remain elevated
Encina Chemical Recycling Plant in Pennsylvania Faces Setback: One of its Buildings Is Too Tall
Mono Lake Tribe Seeks to Assert Its Water Rights in Call For Emergency Halt of Water Diversions to Los Angeles
In a Famed Game Park Near the Foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Animals Are Giving Up