Somewhere deep in “Out Here” lies a moving new musical about the pain of divorce when there is a teenage kid involved, and the possibilities that flow from personal transformation. But for that to be found, this cluttered, scattered, far-from-ready show will have to get out of its own way.
In its best moments, Leslie Buxbaum and Erin McKeown’s musical probes the issues that families go through when one party decides that their true love lies elsewhere — in a show that feels highly influenced, thematically and musically, by both William Finn and James Lapine’s “Falsettos” (recently produced at Court) and to a lesser degree Lisa Kron’s “Fun Home.” There is the guilt, the anger at being abandoned, the determination to stay friends, the self-doubt, the worries about the kid, the kid’s worries about her broken family, everyone’s hope for a changed but brighter future. All of that is rich material for a musical.
Better yet, the experienced director Chay Yew has cast some formidably talented actors in Becca Ayers and Cliff Chamberlain as the couple breaking up, along with Bethany Thomas and Amanda Pulcini as potential third and fourth parties. Ellie Duffey is the savvy teenage kid in the center of the storm, with Z Mowry as another young person caught in this change.
But “Out Here,” another far-from-ready show at Court this rough season, not only can’t settle on its own rules, it lets its structural cleverness and desire to break the fourth wall get carried to such an extent that the show ends up being all about all of that, not what I think Buxbaum and McKeown really wanted to write about. In the end, it feels like you are watching a show running away from itself.
We’re looking at a skeletal house, designed by Andrew Boyce and Lauren M. Nichols. The inhabitants of said house, Brian, Dawn and daughter Cleo, are looking back at us and waving. At first, they seem to think we’re on a garden tour or architectural tour, but then the other parties to this quartet are revealed to be audience members, and so the fourth wall isn’t so much broken as shattered into pieces. The couple even scans the theater for a mediator for their own divorce, finding one (played by Alex Goodrich) among the musicians in the attic.
To be frank, all of this self-consciousness (“Are you going to court me?,” Thomas’ Robin asks Ayers’ Dawn, “at the Court?”) takes up far too much stage time and adds little of value, beyond some initial novelty.
Instead of all that, the show needs more songs beyond recitative, the dominant form here, and more truth-telling. There are the beginnings of a couple of rather nice ones, including one sung by Chamberlain on guitar, but they come late in the piece and function mostly as a sense of what could be, or what should have been had this musical gone through more of a workshop development before being stuck on a mainstage before it was ready.
This is a show about a woman leaving a man for a woman, and therein lies both its theme and its value. Great musicals are almost all about human beings, typically well-meaning people doing their best in difficult circumstances, and the bones of such characters are here and waiting to be fleshed out. All the rest is just gimmicky storytelling, and when that takes over your show, well, it’s time to ask why and then cut it all back and get to your point.
At one moving moment, the show introduces the promising theme of whether a divorce can be stopped before it is final or whether the movements toward it are invariably irrevocable. It’s handled in such a way that you get the sense that Buxbaum and McKeown have thought deeply about this topic, and you only wish that they would cut all the tricks, very few of which work, and replace them with beautiful songs and rich relationships.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Out Here” (2 stars)
When: Through May 10
Where: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $60-$99 at 773-753-4472 and courttheatre.org
