Ricky Alleman (Matt Rodin) has been hired to teach mathematics at a conservative high school in a small rural town in northeastern Pennsylvania, the kind of town where parents demand books be removed from library shelves—and in this repressed town Mark Twain and Toni Morrison are cited as easily disposable bad influences.
Incidentally, Ricky’s surname isn’t meant to imply he represents all men, although his given name may suggest the 30-ish fellow is rickety where his ethics come into play. A gay man, he’s loves theater and will drive miles to see a production of Tony Kushner’s Angels on America and then keep his enthusiasm to himself, all the while boasting he’s ready to pretend he knows enough about football to discuss it whenever the popular local topic comes up.
Ricky is the protagonist in bookwriter-lyricist composer Adam Gwon’s new politically hard-hitting four-person chamber musical, All the World’s a Stage. For some years, Gwon has been gathering a reputation as a talent worth watching and listening to when musicals enter the discussion. Granted, he has yet to be produced on Broadway where reputations, whether earned or not, are usually conferred, Nevertheless, he’s got what it takes.
Here, Gwon has it that people-pleasing Ricky’s determination to keep his job initially stops him from realizing political and artistic convictions must be safeguarded and, when necessary, championed. Therefore, through most of the first sections of the intermissionless work, he sees fit to fudge his background, to disguise who and what he is.
Most significantly, he keeps closeted his homosexuality, which includes hiding as much from friend Dede Rozenel (Elizabeth Stanley), the school’s administrative secretary. He’s also catch-as-catch-can in a budding romance with very out bookstore owner, no-qualms-about-it Michael Hallett (Jon-Michael Reese), a man who some time ago might have been described as “light in the loafers.”
At the same time, Ricky plays close to his chest a friendship with Sam Bucknam (Eliza Pagelle), a rebellious student who loves theater and is intent on entering a scholarship contest reciting either an Angels in America speech or Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds,”) which she initially mocks as outdated.
Ricky is so weak-willed that when confronted with an accusation about the Angels in America speech Sam might be studying—the play hardly community-condoned—he lies about it. The running-scared math teacher is so adamant about his denial that Gwon runs the risk of having his audience lose all patience with not only his mendacious protagonist but with the entire musical, which to that point has been pleasantly tepid, but tepid all the same.
Part of the problem might be that as Gwon writes it, not enough is known about Ricky, who arrives with no background, no past. Perhaps were more initially established about him, he might be regarded in the introductory segments as more than an uninvolving weakling.
But then, and at last—Gwon, having taken his dramatic chances—All the World’s a Stage emerges as forceful, forceful enough to outclass much of what’s currently on Broadway. As well as being entertaining, the musical hits hard at the disturbing times in which we’re living. He goes forward two-fistedly at contemporary times during which the contributions of serious literature are being assailed. He confronts the unfortunate conditions in which effortful attempts are being made to rewrite American history.
For the last third of All the World’s a Stage, Ricky—in part being exposed by Dede and Michael who’ve been putting two and two together about him—gets a grip. He not only expresses what he believes is politically and socially right but also has his pals looking revealingly at themselves. How this affects his future in the schoolroom won’t be described, Gwon’s shaping of it meant to be experienced rather than reported.
What’s unmissable is the weight Gwon’s songs suddenly acquire when musicalizing the newly found firm actions. “The Show Must Go On,” the especially philosophical “Mirrors,” Dede’s self-recriminatory “I Don’t Ask,” and Ricky’s “Part of Me” add up to a whole that’s increasingly more than the sum of its parts. Yes, for his concluding sequences Gwon ignites his work like nobody’s business.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t put the earlier numbers in the shade. His opener “Saturday Night in a Small Auditorium,” sung by all four players, evokes the time and place atmospherically. Along the earlier way, Reese has the opportunity—and grabs it—to stand out in “I’m Your Man,” a striptease, of all unexpected things. Andrea Grody conducts a four-member band that makes plenty of Michael Starobin’s canny orchestrations.
Asking four performers to carry an off-Broadway musical when most Broadway musicals boast overwhelming ensembles may be asking more nowadays than ever. Nonetheless, these four, as keenly directed by Jonathan Silverstein and movement directed by Patrick McCullom, are up to and beyond the task on Steven Kemp’s economical set. More power to them.
As Gwon brings his eminently praise-worthy musical to a close, he adds a look into that remote, repressive North Pennsylvania town’s 10-years-on future. Perhaps it’s a tad more promising than reality would have it, but why not? For his achievement with All the World’s a Stage, Gwon deserves the moments of wishful thinking.
All the World’s a Stage opened April 15, 2025, at Theatre Row and runs through May 10. Tickets and information: www.keencompany.org
