If you’ve lived in New York City for 20 years or so, walking down the street can easily turn into a trip down memory lane. We all have a favorite bar that’s long since closed, a shop we used to frequent, a restaurant where we were regulars. Personally, I’m still mourning the loss of Rocky’s, an old-school red-sauce joint on the corner of Spring and Mulberry; it closed more than 10 years ago, but I still remember the pomodoro sauce that I could never replicate, no matter how hard I tried.
Cornelia Street—the new musical at the Atlantic Theater’s Stage 2—is aimed squarely at the do-you-remember audience: longtime New Yorkers who lose a little piece of themselves each time their favorite hangout is replaced by a Walgreens. A collaboration between playwright/Atlantic vet Simon Stephens (2011’s Bluebird, 2012’s Harper Regan, 2017’s On the Shore of the Wide World) and songwriter Mark Eitzel, the piece is full of good intentions. Unfortunately, it’s also full of grim, virtually indistinguishable songs, predictable lyrics, and off-putting, vaguely drawn characters.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Jacob—played by two-time Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz, in a blustery, big-voiced, perfectly pitched performance—is the chef at Marty’s Café, a small West Village restaurant that’s struggling with gentrification and a booming real estate market. (You’ll find yourself thinking of the bar-restaurant-performance space Cornelia Street Café, which closed in 2018 after 41 years, but really, this could be any mom-and-pop NYC eatery.) Business isn’t exactly booming at Marty’s. The place has one regular diner, John (Ben Rosenfield), and two regular drinkers—William (George Abud), a mean-as-a-snake cab driver/drug dealer, and Sarah (Mary Beth Peil, always a joy), an eccentric former opera singer and onetime Studio 54 regular who’s now kind of a surrogate grandmother to Jacob’s teenage daughter, Patti (Lena Pepe). There’s one server/bartender, Philip (Esteban Andres Cruz), who’s really an actor. About midway through the first act—after William sings the cryptic “Magic Trick” (“Gotta have money/ Gotta scratch your itch/ Also hunger’s a bitch/ Thank god I’m not hungry or old”)—Jacob’s stepdaughter, Misty (Gizel Jiménez) bursts in looking like something out of Cabaret, threatening to torch the place. Cut to the next scene, a few weeks later, and she’s calmly setting tables and wiping down the bar (a gorgeous creation by set designer Scott Pask).
From the first scene, the owner, Marty (Kevyn Morrow), bickers with Jacob about his pricey ingredients such as Iberico ham and Palacios chorizo; it’s clear that Jacob is the chef. So why make Butz chop a bunch of parsley during the first song? Was anyone else worried he was going to cut off a fingertip? (And what chef preps parsley in the dining room, anyway?) But back to the songs, only one of which sounded truly musically distinct to me—Patti’s hard-charging teen-angst rant “You Do Nothing.” It’s also the only number that emerges organically; she’s pissed at her dad, she’s lashing out at Marty, of course she channels all of those big feelings into a song. Otherwise, it’s impossible not to wonder: Would Cornelia Street be better as a play? Especially when you hear lyrics such as “I have hundreds of shoes/ I like cigarettes and booze,” “And in life you must act/ There’s no turning back,” and “If there’s a chance/ I’m gonna take it/ And if there’s a chance/ I’m gonna make it” (that one even gets repeated).
Consider this: The character who makes the biggest impression is the only one without a song. Daniel McCourt (founding Atlantic company member Jordan Lage)—an old friend of Jacob’s who’s now a real estate mogul and, fingers crossed, the money Marty’s Café so desperately needs—barrels in wearing his running gear and musing about grief. Then he quickly and neatly destroys Jacob’s dreams. “The property value ’round Bleecker? The whole of the West Village? Absolutely no way. It’s done. We’re done. It’s over. Red Hook looks good. Bushwick. Bits of Queens,” Daniel says. It’s just not a smart investment. “The problem with a city that is built on newness is that it is always in a state of nostalgia because everything is always disappearing.” Old pal Daniel also drops a few hints about Jacob’s past. In one scene, Stephens—a sharp writer whose plays also include Heisenberg and the Tony-winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time—says more about the main character and the changing face of New York City than he and Eitzel do the entire show.
Cornelia Street opened Feb. 14, 2023, at the Atlantic Stage 2, and runs through March 5. Tickets and info: atlantictheater.org
