Playwright David Adjmi’s extensive resume has included an intimate portrait of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn (Stunning), a fanciful contempo take on Marie Antoinette, and 3C, a controversial sexed-up parody of the sitcom Three’s Company. Interesting work all around, but none of it prepares us for the hyperrealistic triumph that is Stereophonic, now at the Golden Theatre for a limited run after a similarly limited run at Playwrights Horizons.
This saga of a torturous year in the life of a rock group and their trusty engineers as they struggle to craft a new album – heavily inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s legendary Rumours – is quite simply terrific. And a huge part of its success is due to the obvious eagerness of all concerned, actors and production team alike, to wrap themselves inside a thoroughly researched, brilliantly imagined slice of life.
Any “People At Work” play has a lot going for it. Whatever interpersonal conflicts or private ruminations the characters engage in, they always know they have to get back to making the donuts (as in Superior Donuts) or the sandwiches (as in Clyde’s), or to pitching real estate (as in Glengarry Glen Ross). The rhythms of the job establish the rhythms of the action. There’s no end of inspiration for stage business. Nothing beats anchoring drama to labor.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Since the labor in Stereophonic is making music, Will Butler, late of the Grammy-winning indie-rock Arcade Fire, provides half a dozen songs whose “creation” we eavesdrop on, in dribs and drabs over many a late-night session – songs amusingly reminiscent of Rumours cuts and performed live by the cast. (Nothing beats anchoring actors to live instruments.) Even as Adjmi’s characters are beset by tumultuous personal and professional conflicts, many of them clearly based on reported experiences of the Fleetwood Mac cohort, they snap-to when it’s time to pick up the guitar or sit at the piano or drumset. At the mic, each is alive and confident in their artistry. When the beat stops, they’re as lost and screwed up as the rest of us. This cast is constantly required to morph from fragile civilians to confident pros and back again, and it never gets old.
Of the players, central are Sarah Pidgeon as the premiere vocalist insecure because she can’t play an instrument, and Tom Pecinka as her gaslighting husband, jealous of his wife’s superior songwriting skill. Equally invaluable, and impossible to forget, are engineers Grover (Eli Gelb) and Charlie (Andrew R. Butler), the play’s hilarious Vladimir and Estragon. (Sooner will Godot arrive than their wayward quintet assemble for the next take.)
The verisimilitude of Stereophonic extends to every aspect of its presentation. You can practically inhale the cold coffee, stale pizza and weed permeating designer David Zinn’s recording studio, idiosyncratic yet generic. (When the locale shifts from Sausalito to L.A., the set changes not one iota.) Given the 1976-77 time period (“It’s like fucking Watergate around here!,” someone exclaims), costume designer Enver Chakartash goes mad with enough groovy tie-dye, embroidered shirts and bell bottoms to make a Boomer squeal with delight (this one did, anyhow). Jiyoun Chang’s lighting deftly shifts moods without compromising the realism of a harshly-lit sandbox for musicians to play in. And the ear is as stimulated as the eye, thanks to sound designer Ryan Rumery’s manipulating of spoken dialogue, tunes amplified or acoustic, as well as the sounds of silence.
Speaking of manipulation, director Daniel Aukin understands that while time is a river, rivers need license to rush or to linger. He allows sequences to breathe with real life, which means racing through overlapping dialogue here, or indulging daringly long pauses there. The 3-hours-and-five-minutes running time is atypical for Broadway, but like one track of an album giving way to another, the scenes create a haunting cycle of tension and release, and justify the time expended. You won’t see more assured direction this year, I feel sure of it.
Adjmi’s busy bees are met at selected, even random moments in the course of their year of activity. Whenever we drop in, there are moments of high drama and others of rollicking humor. Often both, in the fumbling efforts of the addled British bassist (a dazzling Will Brill) to battle his addictions so as not to lose his long-suffering wife (Juliana Canfield, a mesmerizing presence throughout).
Yet every so often amidst the hurlyburly, Euterpe, muse of music, smiles. Talent trumps turmoil, and out of the blue something magical flies into those microphones to be laid down on tape. We share the band’s elation – it’s the very same elation we’ll feel when we buy the record and experience a timeless cut for the first time – and even dour, keeps-his-own-counsel drummer Simon (Chris Stack, superb) can’t hold back. “We’re such a good band!” he can exclaim, pulling his colleagues, his co-religionists one might better say, into one giant group hug.
Once again, in the end, it’s all about the work.
Stereophonic opened April 19, 2024, at the John Golden Theatre and runs through January 12, 2025. Tickets and information: stereophonicplay.com
