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meteordustThe only thing I knew about If/Then was that it was a "sliding doors" story. But that was enough to hook me. Oh, and it was originally a Broadway hit, starring Idina Menzel. Which made it a surprising pick for a Neglected Musicals production. But anyway. I went to see it at the Hayes Theatre.
It was an enthralling experience. Partly because of how the barebones way it was performed made it feel timeless, and partly because the theme of "what if" feels so timely at this point in my life.
Almost every musical this year, I keep thinking, "This is the best musical I've seen all year!" But they just keep raising the bar.
The staging
The program book says, "Neglected Musicals is a theatre initiative dedicated to presenting musical theatre that has never or rarely been in Australia. The musicals are presented with scripts in hand, piano accompaniment, after only a day's rehearsal."
I knew about the first part. But not about the second! So I was surprised but intrigued when the director came on stage at the start to explain the setup.
Neglected Musicals is a not-for-profit, and everyone participating is a volunteer. Each musical only runs for a week.
The orchestra was a single musician on a keyboard. The set was several chairs, on an otherwise bare stage, with a plain black backdrop. The actors were dressed in contemporary clothes, which fit the modern day setting, but also could have been just what they wore from home.
And the actors performed with their scripts in hand! They mostly used them for dialogue, and sang the songs from memory. It didn't get in the way of them expressing their emotions or connecting with the other characters.
What it did, though, was make it feel like I was getting a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes of a musical. It felt intimate, especially since the Hayes Theatre is a pretty small venue, around 100 seats. (I don't know that the actors were even miked up!) It felt like it was getting back to the basics of theatre. It reminded me powerfully of how people have been telling stories to each other for thousands of years, in stone amphitheatres and around campfires.
It wouldn't work for something like Wicked, where the spectacle is half the fun. But for a deeply personal and character driven story, it was extremely effective.
The story
It's about a woman who moves back to New York after divorce, for a new beginning, and the day she makes a decision that splits her life onto two different tracks.
She meets up with two friends in a park - Lucas, her best friend from college, and Kate, her brand new neighbour. Lucas wants her to join his activist friends to get petition signatures, and Kate wants her to get coffee and listen to music.
We get to see both timelines play out over the years.
Unlike some other sliding doors stories, it wasn't like there was a "good timeline" and a "bad timeline". They both had their triumphs and their tragedies, their joys and their griefs.
The timelines alternated between scenes, and even appeared in the same scene. This could have been confusing, but there were some clever signposts.
The main character is named Elizabeth, and in one timeline she goes by Liz (the name Kate suggested for her new life), and in the other timeline she goes by Beth (the name Lucas used to know her by). Also, the actor wore glasses as Liz, and didn't wear glasses as Beth. This was so helpful, as an immediate way to distinguish them!
For me, it was an incredibly meaningful and resonant story. You know how some people feel existential dread when they contemplate the vastness of space? I have the same feeling when I think about how the tiniest change could potentially have made a huge difference to your life.
The characters in If/Then talk a lot about destiny and chance, fate and choice. Not just the sliding doors moment that precipitates both timelines, but numerous other moments where they could have made other decisions. When it's easy to have regrets or wonder "what if".
The way nothing is perfect, so we live with imperfection. The importance of love, friendship, community, and purpose. And the way it circles back, in both timelines, for second chances and new beginnings. It was immensely satisfying. And it made me feel reassured that no matter the vagaries of chance, we are still who we are, on some fundamental level.
It reminded me of that scene in Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, when Vimes and Sweeper are talking about multiple universes, and if everything happens somewhere or not.
The songs
My highlights:
* "Ain't No Man Manhattan" - I love this riff on "no man is an island". On one level, it's a protest against the gentrification of a neighbourhood, but on another, it's about community and living in a city and the connections between us and the chance encounters that affect our lives.
* "You Learn to Live Without" - Starts off deceptively gentle and quietly heartbreaking, goes through the journey of loss and loneliness in their different forms, and somehow coming out the other side.
* "Always Starting Over" - It's not often that the big song of the musical is the last song. But this is the one that's epic and catchy and lingers in my head. It sums up the whole thesis of the musical.
Honourable mentions to "The Moment Explodes" and "Love While You Can". But seriously, so many of them are so good.
The cast
It was fun to see several familiar faces, including Monique Sallé (as Kate), Blake Appelqvist (as Josh), and Tom Sharah (as David). Though I think they must shake up the roles between performances, since some of casting varied from the list in the program book.
Night Watch quote
"Oh, that," said Vimes. "I know about that. Like, you make a decision in this universe and you made a different decision in another one. I heard the wizards talking about that at a posh reception once. [...] But they were saying that, in a way, everything happens somewhere..."
"And you believed them?"
"It sounds like complete thungas. But sometimes you can't help wondering: what would have happened if I'd done something different--"
"Like when you killed your wife?"
Sweeper was impressed at Vimes's lack of reaction.
"This is a test, right?"
"You're a quick study, Mister Vimes."
"But in some other universe, believe me, I hauled off and punched you one."
Again, Sweeper smiled the annoying little smile that suggested he didn't believe him.
"You haven't killed your wife," he said. "Anywhere. There is nowhere, however huge the multiverse is, where Sam Vimes as he is now has murdered Lady Sybil. But the theory is quite clear. It says that if anything could happen without breaking any physical laws, it must happen. But it hasn't. And yet the 'many universes' theory works. Without it, no one would ever be able to make a decision at all."
"So?"
"So what people do matters!" said Sweeper. "People invent other laws. What they do is important! [...] It means the multiverse isn't infinite and people's choices are far more vital than they think. They can, by what they do, change the universe."
It was an enthralling experience. Partly because of how the barebones way it was performed made it feel timeless, and partly because the theme of "what if" feels so timely at this point in my life.
Almost every musical this year, I keep thinking, "This is the best musical I've seen all year!" But they just keep raising the bar.
The staging
The program book says, "Neglected Musicals is a theatre initiative dedicated to presenting musical theatre that has never or rarely been in Australia. The musicals are presented with scripts in hand, piano accompaniment, after only a day's rehearsal."
I knew about the first part. But not about the second! So I was surprised but intrigued when the director came on stage at the start to explain the setup.
Neglected Musicals is a not-for-profit, and everyone participating is a volunteer. Each musical only runs for a week.
The orchestra was a single musician on a keyboard. The set was several chairs, on an otherwise bare stage, with a plain black backdrop. The actors were dressed in contemporary clothes, which fit the modern day setting, but also could have been just what they wore from home.
And the actors performed with their scripts in hand! They mostly used them for dialogue, and sang the songs from memory. It didn't get in the way of them expressing their emotions or connecting with the other characters.
What it did, though, was make it feel like I was getting a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes of a musical. It felt intimate, especially since the Hayes Theatre is a pretty small venue, around 100 seats. (I don't know that the actors were even miked up!) It felt like it was getting back to the basics of theatre. It reminded me powerfully of how people have been telling stories to each other for thousands of years, in stone amphitheatres and around campfires.
It wouldn't work for something like Wicked, where the spectacle is half the fun. But for a deeply personal and character driven story, it was extremely effective.
The story
It's about a woman who moves back to New York after divorce, for a new beginning, and the day she makes a decision that splits her life onto two different tracks.
She meets up with two friends in a park - Lucas, her best friend from college, and Kate, her brand new neighbour. Lucas wants her to join his activist friends to get petition signatures, and Kate wants her to get coffee and listen to music.
We get to see both timelines play out over the years.
Unlike some other sliding doors stories, it wasn't like there was a "good timeline" and a "bad timeline". They both had their triumphs and their tragedies, their joys and their griefs.
The timelines alternated between scenes, and even appeared in the same scene. This could have been confusing, but there were some clever signposts.
The main character is named Elizabeth, and in one timeline she goes by Liz (the name Kate suggested for her new life), and in the other timeline she goes by Beth (the name Lucas used to know her by). Also, the actor wore glasses as Liz, and didn't wear glasses as Beth. This was so helpful, as an immediate way to distinguish them!
For me, it was an incredibly meaningful and resonant story. You know how some people feel existential dread when they contemplate the vastness of space? I have the same feeling when I think about how the tiniest change could potentially have made a huge difference to your life.
The characters in If/Then talk a lot about destiny and chance, fate and choice. Not just the sliding doors moment that precipitates both timelines, but numerous other moments where they could have made other decisions. When it's easy to have regrets or wonder "what if".
The way nothing is perfect, so we live with imperfection. The importance of love, friendship, community, and purpose. And the way it circles back, in both timelines, for second chances and new beginnings. It was immensely satisfying. And it made me feel reassured that no matter the vagaries of chance, we are still who we are, on some fundamental level.
It reminded me of that scene in Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, when Vimes and Sweeper are talking about multiple universes, and if everything happens somewhere or not.
The songs
My highlights:
* "Ain't No Man Manhattan" - I love this riff on "no man is an island". On one level, it's a protest against the gentrification of a neighbourhood, but on another, it's about community and living in a city and the connections between us and the chance encounters that affect our lives.
* "You Learn to Live Without" - Starts off deceptively gentle and quietly heartbreaking, goes through the journey of loss and loneliness in their different forms, and somehow coming out the other side.
* "Always Starting Over" - It's not often that the big song of the musical is the last song. But this is the one that's epic and catchy and lingers in my head. It sums up the whole thesis of the musical.
Honourable mentions to "The Moment Explodes" and "Love While You Can". But seriously, so many of them are so good.
The cast
It was fun to see several familiar faces, including Monique Sallé (as Kate), Blake Appelqvist (as Josh), and Tom Sharah (as David). Though I think they must shake up the roles between performances, since some of casting varied from the list in the program book.
Night Watch quote
"Oh, that," said Vimes. "I know about that. Like, you make a decision in this universe and you made a different decision in another one. I heard the wizards talking about that at a posh reception once. [...] But they were saying that, in a way, everything happens somewhere..."
"And you believed them?"
"It sounds like complete thungas. But sometimes you can't help wondering: what would have happened if I'd done something different--"
"Like when you killed your wife?"
Sweeper was impressed at Vimes's lack of reaction.
"This is a test, right?"
"You're a quick study, Mister Vimes."
"But in some other universe, believe me, I hauled off and punched you one."
Again, Sweeper smiled the annoying little smile that suggested he didn't believe him.
"You haven't killed your wife," he said. "Anywhere. There is nowhere, however huge the multiverse is, where Sam Vimes as he is now has murdered Lady Sybil. But the theory is quite clear. It says that if anything could happen without breaking any physical laws, it must happen. But it hasn't. And yet the 'many universes' theory works. Without it, no one would ever be able to make a decision at all."
"So?"
"So what people do matters!" said Sweeper. "People invent other laws. What they do is important! [...] It means the multiverse isn't infinite and people's choices are far more vital than they think. They can, by what they do, change the universe."
