Hey out there, all you folks waiting for the first pandemic musical revue to show up. Your long wait is over. The enterprising (and perhaps undervalued) Prospect Theater Company has opened Notes From Now, a good and even adventurous 90 minutes devoted to songs about the relentless Covid-19 takeover and related subjects.
Described as “Songs of Resilience and Renewal,” Prospect producing artistic director Cara Reichel and managing director Melissa Huber are ballyhooing 17 songs mostly by composers and lyricists not yet as known as they deserve to be. They’re joined by a few ringers like Gretchen Cryer, Jeff Blumenkrantz, Adam Gwon, and Stephen Schwartz.
To plug the resilience-renewal theme the contributors have edged sideway into subjects such as, for a first instance, Paulo K. Tiról’s “Mr. What’s-Your-Name.” Thani Brant, Darron Hayes, and John Yi are students grouse about the whole notion of virtual classrooms.
In Jay Adana’s “Craving You,” Brant and Genesis Adella Collado (at the performance I saw) have initiated a Zoom affair. As they sing and wield test swabs to find the negative results in their favor, they finally agree to meet in the nubile flesh. Mum’s the word on what happens when they do.
Composer Deborah Abramson and lyricist Amanda Yesnowitz have Judy McLane fronting the seven-singers ensemble on “The World of the Puzzle.” She’s grateful for having puzzles to pass the time while the pandemic lockdowns lengthen but lost when she finishes one.
Prospect co-founder and resident writer Peter Mills passionately offers “Coming Back to You,” a love song to theater and a prayer for its widespread return. Josh Lamon intones it with the kind of gusto that announces him as ready to render “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” in the next Guys and Dolls revival.
As for Mills, he’s the only writing participant who has two Notes for Now pieces. The other one, calling on the entire cast, is “Polarized,” which picks up climate change as a pressing subject. Seven polar bears having a grand time together, are separated when an ice floe cracks and then cracks open twice more. Mills, a top-notch punster, includes the lyric “go with the floe.” (Someone needs to explain why Mills, one of today’s best songwriters, has yet to arrive on Broadway.)
What Gretchen Cryer’s angry “Still Got a Hold on Me” has to do with the pandemic is a bit of a head-scratcher. McLane sings about an affair gone wrong and mentions the offending man’s name. Still, maybe the power ballad is a metaphor for hanging on when Covid hits. Whatever, it’s a treat to hear from Cryer again.
Blumenkrantz’s “Ovid” gets cute about a guy creating a Covid companion (Covid/ Ovid, get it?) from various kitchen ingredients. This is an earlier opportunity for Lamon to command the spotlight.
Two sterner stuff items are the anthems “We’re Building Our Future” from Troy Anthony; and Douglas Lyons’ “A Song for Now,” both led by the harbor-bell-voiced Hayes with the other clarion ensemble members chiming in.
Schwartz composed the music for the finale, “Bloom.” The poetic lyrics are Alexandra Elle’s. She’s celebrating those who’ve outlasted the pandemic. (So far.) As Elle views it, the light at the end of the tunnel is very bright, indeed. This makes for a beatific close
Although the Prospect-ers might have arranged their timely songbook as a straightforward concert, they’ve given it a lovely production (Riw Rakkulchon designed the set). Draped from the high ceiling are what resemble wisteria bouquets. Below a second-level platform, a round module of several parts containing covered bins (for costumes) sits center stage—that is, in front of and aside the six-piece band, conducted by Sean Peter Forte from arrangements mostly by Macy Schmidt.
Billy Bustamante is the director/choreographer, and has he done a beautiful job moving the seven players up and down and in and around with grace and grit. If anyone reading this is looking for someone like Bustamante to bring a new musical to thrilling fruition, Bustamante himself is the fellow to do it.
Like many revues that have preceded Notes From Now over the decades, this one is uneven and, surprisingly for the Prospect, serves up some careless rhyming. (“Fantasy” and “ecstasy” do not rhyme.) A few of the numbers don’t follow through; they are even pretentious No call to point them out.
Nonetheless, so much of these many cheerful notes are so striking that they add up to a healthy tonic for the pandemic (not yet post-pandemic) blues.
Notes from Now opened March 10, 2022, at 59E59 and runs through March 20. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
