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Theatre in Review: Hello Again (Transport Group)

Nikki Graff Lanzarone. Photo Carol Rosegg

Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde has been adapted endlessly, on stage and in film, but surely there is no more haunting version of it than Hello Again. Schnitzler conceived a sexual roundelay of interlinked lovers as a way of commenting on the class system of turn-of-the-century Vienna. In Hello Again, the composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa gives the material a strange, yet compelling, twist, placing each encounter in a different decade of the 20th century. Strict chronology is not honored; in LaChiusa's universe, time is out of joint and the decades appear out of sequence.

The concept makes no logical sense, yet it enhances the emotional pull of a piece that has been transformed from an act of social criticism into a powerful meditation on desire and its discontents. "I should've met you in some other life/I should have met you in some other time," declares a frantic lover before taking part in one of many couplings that generate considerable heat but little warmth. Thus, a young soldier at the turn of the century has a fast, unsatisfying tussle with a whore; he later appears in the 1940s, on the make for a serious, love-hungry nurse. She turns up again in the 1960s, serving private duty and determined to have her way with her college-age patient. Not all of the couples are heterosexual: an upper middle-class husband from the '50s, who is unable to satisfy his wife's desires, turns up on the Titanic, where he all but rapes a young man as the ship goes to its doom. The young man is next seen in the '70s as the bed partner of a writer (actually more of a poseur). This last scene more or less provides the musical's thesis statement as LaChiusa contrasts the lusty, yet loveless, erotic action with words that describe the men's deeper longings, none of which will be fulfilled in their one-night stand.

To some Hello Again might coldly clever and all-too-obvious in its judgments. But La Chiusa's music transforms the piece, effectively evoking the ineffable needs that accompany sexual attraction -- for affirmation, tenderness, and the healing of long-held wounds -- and which prove tantalizingly, frustratingly out of reach for these desperately seeking souls. (The score mixes period pastiche with the composer's signature style, in which powerful flights of lyricism do battle with insistent rhythms, creating a dramatic tension that underlines each erotic battle.) Egging them on is a sense of time running out. "We may die tomorrow," says more than one of them. "The world could end tomorrow," adds another. "We only have a little time," notes a third.

Once again, as with the recent revival of The Boys in the Band and the new musical See Rock City & Other Destinations, the director, Jack Cummings III, has opted for an environmental staging, scattering the action all over a SoHo loft filled with round tables at which the audience sits. (The layout has been realized by the set designer Sandra Goldmark). Thus, one scene may unfold directly in front of you, while another may be viewed across a crowded room. It's an eccentric, if generally effective, approach, that does much to support the mood of the piece. My one reservation has to do with R. Lee Kennedy's lighting. Relying on incandescent bulbs, a couple of period chandeliers, and a multitude of tiny LED PARs, Kennedy lights the room for ambiance rather than drama, creating a constantly shifting atmosphere for each set of lovers. It's an arguable approach that enhances the show's dreamlike nature, and yet there were times I wished I could have seen the performers' faces in more detail. A couple of followspots might have helped things along without betraying the design's fundamental concept. On the other hand, thanks to Mary-Mitchell Campbell's sensitive new orchestrations and Michael Rasbury's remarkably restrained sound design, Hello Again achieves the ideal of seeming totally live and unreinforced. Kathryn Rohe's efficient costumes help us keep track of the decades.

And, from the first appearance of Nikki Graff Lanzarone, trailing clouds of erotic mystery as an eerily self-possessed whore, Cummings' cast proves a worthy rival for the starry ensemble (including Donna Murphy, Malcolm Gets, and John Cameron Mitchell) that premiered the show at Lincoln Center in 1993. Alan Campbell is in fine vocal and dramatic form as a senator who cruelly detaches himself from one lover only to pour out his inchoate longings to a total stranger. Jonathan Hammond is slick as can be as the writer, spinning out lies about his celebrity friends to seduce a boy half his age. Rachel Bay Jones has a white-hot intensity as the actress clinging desperately to a lover who is halfway out the door. Bob Stillman, his face altered by lust and self-loathing, is especially effective as a middle-aged predator of young men. Max von Essen's young soldier is alternately bruised and brutal in a pair of seduction scenes.

In the end, Hello Again is such an odd and original piece that you simply have to experience it It's a mood musical, and the mood its casts is both seductive and disturbing La Chiusa has sometimes been dismissed as an icy conceptualist, and once or twice the charge has stuck. But few modern musicals are as rife with feeling as this, and thanks to a sympathetic band of interpreters, those feelings are brought ravishingly to life.--David Barbour


(21 March 2011)

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