Theatre in Review: Once (New York Theatre Workshop)

	Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti. Photo: Joan Marcus

On the face of it, is there a less likely candidate for the musical theatre than the film Once? An out-of-nowhere indie hit in 2007, it recounts a few days in the lives of an Irish street singer and a Czech pianist, in semi-improvised, cinéma-verité style; the story of a romance that never really gets started, it stars a pair of non-actors playing characters based on themselves. It looks like it was shot with an eight-millimeter camera and features a sound mix that left me wondering if I didn't need a hearing aid. Whether you love it or not (most did, I didn't), it depends on a rough, casual, caught-on-the-fly feeling. To try and nail it down into a musical play would be tantamount to bottling moonbeams, wouldn't it?

Such thoughts accompanied me into New York Theatre Workshop the other day. Five minutes into Once, they were abandoned. In an achievement that seems just short of miraculous, a team of theatre artists has taken these evanescent materials, carefully stylizing them into a highly original and deeply moving entertainment. Everything about Once shows the mark of restraint -- which is why its impact is so enormous.

As in the film, the show traces a few days in the lives of the unnamed Guy and Girl. Fed up with a nonexistent musical career -- having gotten no farther than singing on the streets of Dublin -- and scarred by a broken romance, he works with his widowed father, repairing vacuum cleaners, spending his nights in a sad little bedroom above their shop. A chance meeting with a winsome, bluntly honest Czech émigrée who shares his passion for music thoroughly shakes things up. Taken with his obvious talent, she relentlessly coaxes him into recording his songs, convincing him to plan a trip to New York, where he will pursue his music and get back together with the girl who got away. It goes without saying that Guy and Girl fall in love, but she's already married -- if separated from her husband -- and tied to her mother and young daughter. Guy is totally at loose ends, barely able to care for himself, much less another, and is still embroiled in an affair that hasn't really ended. The action follows them as the demo disc is made, aided by a motley collection of their friends, and as they inescapably reach the moment where they must say good-bye.

Everyone involved in bringing Once to the stage understands the power that comes from not overdoing it. In his plays, Enda Walsh creates characters who spew torrents -- cataracts, really -- of words; here, his libretto is written with an aching spareness, informed by an ear that's ever alert to what is not being said. When Guy invites Girl into his room and casually suggests a one-nighter, there is a pause that says far more than the two-word rebuke that follows. A tableau of them at the seaside, watching the waves come in, is thick with unspoken feelings, as is the dialogue in which they cagily discuss matters of the heart; when she finally admits she loves him, she does so in her native language, willfully mistranslating the statement when he asks her what she said. Later, they fantasize so happily about running off to New York that you begin to feel that it could really happen, until a single question from her shatters the mood, leaving a silence more profound than any words could communicate.

The songs, by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglova (the stars of the film), unleash the feelings that are so carefully held back in the book scenes, resulting in stunningly revelatory moments. This is so even though they are written in a folk-pop style, with poetically elusive lyrics that don't address the situation directly, as one is supposed to do in musical theatre. Never mind; rules are made to broken occasionally, and here the songs succeed magnificently in letting us know what's going on in the characters' troubled, overfull hearts. When we meet Guy, he is standing in the street singing "Leave," a cry of anguish from a lover beset by unfinished emotional business. Guy and Girl repair to a music shop to perform "Falling Slowly," the transfixing ballad that makes clear, without a single explicit word, the deep vein of feeling that connects this pair of near-strangers. Other memorable numbers are the urgent "Say it to Me Now," sung when Guy needs a bank loan, and "The Hill," which explores the longing and ambivalence haunting Girl as her friendship with Guy deepens.

Without the right actors to play Guy and Girl, Once would be a total non-starter; unless the powerful connection between them is plain to see, there's no play at all. Fortunately, the director, John Tiffany, has chosen wisely. Steve Kazee is an instantly winning Guy, his handsome looks undercut by an abiding uncertainty and sense of loss; when he tears into the numbers, his voice is raw with pain and need; Cristin Milioti captures Girl's disarming directness, as well as her impatience with anything less than the truth. ("She is the Ambassador of Honesty," notes Guy at one point, not entirely with admiration.) She's also capable of signaling, with a single look, a startling number of conflicting emotions. The two play together with remarkable ease and facility; even in their quietest moments, I don't recommend looking away, even for a second. I guarantee you'll miss something.

It's true that whenever the action shifts focus from Guy and Girl to the people around them, the libretto risks a certain cuteness, particularly in the scenes of the musicians squabbling in the studio. This only happens a few times, however, and there are lovely contributions by David Patrick Kelly as Guy's quietly grieving father, Anne L. Nathan as Girl's practical mother, Andy Taylor as a bank manager with a secret musical life, and Paul Whitty as the obstreperous music store proprietor with an eye for the ladies.

Taking place on Bob Crowley's evocative unit set depicting an Irish pub, with a curved upstage wall covered with mirrors and old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, Once is staged with exactly the right degree of stylization by Tiffany. The company doubles as musicians, taking part in the elegant, almost stately, movement sequences staged by Steven Hoggett. The net effect is to draw you entirely into this world of intimate exchanges and feelings left silent. Working with an extremely limited color palette, Natasha Katz's astonishingly beautiful lighting functions as a kind of camera eye, moving from full stage looks to carefully sculpted chiaroscuros. Clive Goodwin's sound design provides extremely natural reinforcement as well as a variety of effects, including seagulls and ocean waves.

Musical theatre isn't usually the best place to illustrate the maxim that less is more, but, by eliminating even a hint of the excessive, the people behind Once have given their small, heartbreaking story both a classical elegance and an enormous power. Once isn't like any other musical in New York, which is why I would recommend seeing it at the first possible moment.--David Barbour