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SIZE MATTERS
commentary
by John Topping
High Fidelity
opened December 7, 2006
at the Imperial Theatre
open run
It wasn't long into the show before our staff reviewer already felt
somewhat helpless about writing a review of "High Fidelity," the new Broadway
musical that is based on the film of the same name that is based on the novel of the
same name by Nick Hornby. "I'm not the audience for this show," he lamented,
discouraged by every moment presented on the stage and feeling a bit disparaged that
he could not give a fair and balanced review. I happened to see the show with
him and I am a little closer to the demographic that it's aimed at (but only a
little), so I offered to take the reins this time around and write a
commentary.
It does beg the question: who exactly is this aimed at?
"Sophisticated Theatre-goers" should be crossed off the list.
Immediately. That leaves (a) people who go to Broadway musicals because they
are musicals running on Broadway, (b) die-hard fans of the movie "High Fidelity,"
and (c) people who have seen and loved other entries in the current trend of turning
reasonably popular films into Broadway musicals, such as last season’s "The Wedding
Singer." As a matter of fact, those in category (c) are almost guaranteed to
like it as, on the way out, we overheard a fellow audience member say to her friend,
"Honestly? I liked it more than The Wedding Singer." (It was interpreted
as praise.)
Indeed, the audience we shared the experience of watching this
performance with did seem to be eating it up. However, we were not convinced
that it was an entirely "real" audience. They were way too excited about being
there before the lights went down, and a tad too enthusiastic about the show along
the way. True, a show like "Spamalot" had an even more overenthusiastic
audience when I saw it, but that was an audience of overzealous fans of "Monty
Python and the Holy Grail," cultivated over the course of 30 years, who had somehow
earned the right to annoyingly laugh at the jokes the moment the first syllable was
uttered, long before the joke had a chance to actually BE funny. Unless "High
Fidelity" is an infinitely more popular film than I'd ever realized, this reeked of
being a heavily papered house. Where they came from we could only speculate
(and did), but it was obvious that there were interconnected parties all around,
which we picked up from such telltale signs as people in the boxes waving and
shout-talking to people in the front mezzanine, and other similarly excited
communications from one part of the theatre to another. It seemed that whoever
was in charge of the phone tree gave very specific orders to exude enthusiasm as the
price of their freebie ticket. But, like an untalented understudy who hasn't
been given adequate direction, we didn't believe them.
Before continuing, a brief pause for the plot. The lead character
Rob, played by Will Chase, runs an independent record store (yes, the vinyl kind) in
Brooklyn (by way of Chicago in the movie by way of London in the novel), where
independent artists and independent music labels are championed, and the
independently-minded male music mavens hang out and "work" (the store doesn’t make
enough money to pay them, but they don’t care). There are only two actual
customers – and not just for theatrical economy. Other would-be customers are
chased out by Barry (Jay Klaitz) – the self-appointed Nazi of musical taste – if
they dare ask for the wrong kind of music (such as the dreaded John
Tesh).
Rob is an avid list-maker of the Top 5 [fill in the blank]s To Bring On
A Desert Island. His primary obsession is the Top 5 Break-ups of his life, a
compendium of ladies who left him (for it’s always they who leave him) and left him
hurting bad, listed chronologically. He is currently feeling freshly wounded
by Laura (Jenn Colella), the most recent babe he has driven away, and tries to fool
himself into thinking that she is #6 in the line of All Time Top Break-ups, in an
effort to psyche himself out that she isn’t that important to him. But she
budges her way into the #5 spot (a lot of the story is spent in his imagination),
which intensifies his obsession with getting her back into his life, even as he
tries to let go of her and move forward with his life.
Now back to the audience: not all of the enthusiasm lacked
sincerity. The two teenagers sitting behind us, whom I don't think were part
of the imported group, emitted loud, genuine guffaws at several moments, and seemed
to be loving it. In fact, if there was any doubt that they were loving it, a
particular sequence caused one of them to double over, clap hands, and declare out
loud more than once, "I love it!" This involved a moment when Rob's current
arch-nemesis Ian (Jeb Brown), a tofu-eating, meditating, chakra-balancing, new
age-type antagonist who likes to massage too much, and who is sleeping with Laura,
takes it upon himself to visit the record store and tell him to stop calling.
Rob’s imagination rewinds and replays three times as he fantasizes his retort to Ian
in three different styles of music, culminating as a hard-core urban rapper who
kills the m*******cker and promises in repeated refrain to piss on his grave.
I didn't quite love this whimsical moment, but it happens to be the highlight of the
show and is hard not to, at least, like it (though I think our forlorn reviewer
managed without a problem).
Although the show is mostly flat and uninspired, it's not without some
entertainment value (though it falls far short of $110 worth). But for
whatever entertainment it achieves, it is ultimately not big enough for the theatre
it's in. Although it's not a gargantuan, behemoth stage like the Minskoff,
which is too big for any show short of a Cirque de Soleil extravaganza, it's
nonetheless a hefty space to occupy, and "High Fidelity" is too small-scale in tone
and execution to fill it. We shouldn’t be quite so conscious of how long it
takes to walk from one side of the proscenium to the other. There were many
jokes that would have worked much better had they been allowed to land instead of
being sold to us. Small moments seemed to be straining to reach the upper
balcony, even though all were heavily miked. Three seasons ago in the same
location, Hugh Jackman's performance in “The Boy From Oz” was big enough to fill the
entire theatre in that otherwise fairly flimsy evening. "Avenue Q" is another
example of a show that was probably bursting with charm in its Off Broadway run, but
plateaus early on in its current Broadway home (not that they don't pack'em in, of
course) at the John Golden Theatre (which probably would have been just about the
perfect size for "High Fidelity," come to think of it).
That would have improved it, but it would not have saved it. “High
Fidelity” simply flounders as it struggles against itself to rise to the
entertainment it longs to be. You don’t really care about any of the
characters – though the book by the over-praised David Lindsay-Abaire is not as much
of a shameful hack job as Charles Busch’s book of “Taboo” was a few seasons back –
and so you don’t really care about even the best of the songs (by Tom Kitt and
Amanda Green). Poor Will Chase has the hapless job of carrying a show that
simply isn't working, and consequently comes off looking the worst. The rest
of the cast gets more of a chance to shine, although the material is never
commensurate with their talent. I found myself noticing and appreciating
random inventiveness all the way down to some of the actors with no lines. Of
course, I was watching them because the things on the stage that I was supposed to
be watching weren't interesting to me.
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