While doing research for Gone Missing, the actors/reporters in the docu-theater troupe The Civilians “established rules for interviewing about lost objects,” explains playwright/Civilians founder Steven Cosson in the program notes for the current City Center staging. “No stories of lost people were allowed.” Yet this entire production feels like the story of a lost person: composer Michael Friedman, the longtime Civilians member who wrote the music and lyrics for Gone Missing, who died Sept. 9, 2017, of complications from H.I.V./AIDS at age 41. Friedman was the artistic director of the Encores! Off-Center; City Center has dedicated this season’s Off-Center series—late June’s Songs for a New World, Gone Missing, and the upcoming Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope—to him.
If you linger in the lobby or outside the theater beforehand, you’re bound to overhear people swapping stories about him, or chatting about their favorite Friedman songs. He also wrote the scores for 2015’s Pretty Filthy, 2014’s The Great Immensity, and 2009’s This Beautiful City (all with The Civilians); for that kicky Shakespeare in the Park musical version of Love’s Labour’s Lost in 2013 (Alex Timbers directed and wrote the book); for the stage adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude in 2014 (newly minted The Band’s Visit Tony winner Itamar Moses provided the libretto); and, also with Timbers, for 2010’s presidential-themed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (you know you love “Populism Yea Yea”!). That list isn’t even exhaustive; he provided loads of original music for plays as well—perhaps most notably Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. For my part, I adore his Fortress songs; “The Ballad of Mingus Rude” is in the Top 25 Most Played list on my phone.
It was a treat to revisit Gone Missing, a loosely connected collection of songs and stories of lost objects: a silver-and-gold buckle ring (“very manly”), a single black Gucci pump (size six), an Agnés B. scarf (pilfered from a pool table at a lesbian bar: “You know where I picture it? Balled up with a cat on it. Or worse. In an SUV. In an SUV balled up with a cat on it,” sniffs the owner, played by Deborah S. Craig), all your earthly goods (“I lost all my possessions and then I lost my mind. I gave everything to a maharaja. He was sixteen. In New York, not in India,” recalls a social worker, played by Susan Blackwell).
The wacky stories are amusing—“A couple of weeks ago I was talking to this old horse,” says a pet psychic (also Blackwell)—but the ones that are the most affecting are also the simplest, such as the tale of Sniffle, a little girl’s sock doll who went astray in a dumpster in “godawful Grinnell,” Iowa (told by Craig in a very Midwestern accent). I’m still trying to make sense of the only through line: Teri and Dr. Palinurus, an obtuse radio interviewer and her guest, respectively, who banter about Plato, continents, cookies, the Atlantic Ocean, the Sargasso Sea, eels, and other oddities. Not surprisingly, these two are the only fictional characters—and the least effective. All the others are based on real interviews conducted by the Civilians.
The songs are brief—oh, too brief!—but charming and catchy as heck, and surprisingly deep. Take the toe-tapper “Etch a Sketch”: You might think Friedman is being cutesy with the refrain—“I’m an Etch a Sketch (but now I’m all shook up)/
I’m a piece of wax (but now the imprint’s lost),” sings a woman (Aysan Celik); and then the lyrics take an unexpected emotional turn.
Now I can’t remember the things that I was thinking
Like when do chickens baste
Of how a kiss should taste
Who was the president who came after Lincoln?
My blackboard’s been erased
My blackboard’s been erased.
The melancholy lyric “my blackboard’s been erased” comes hot on the heels of the tear-inducing “Lost Horizon,” a haunting ballad rendered gorgeously by actor–playwright–performance artist Taylor Mac. A man sings of wanting to live in Shangri-La, Xanadu, and Babylon; yearning to “sail away”: “And did you say/ I seemed so far away/ Am I ok?/ Why couldn’t I stay?” On July 11, the sobs for Michael Friedman were audible, and they were many.
Gone Missing opened July 11, 2018, and runs through July 12. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
