July 22--The premise sounded amusing 10 years ago when word first started trickling out about this show: a musical about the making of said musical.
Two guys -- composer Jeff Bowen and book writer Hunter Bell, "two nobodies in New York" as they dub themselves -- team up with a pair of their actress friends (the characters Heidi and Susan, based on their real friends Susan Blackwell and Heidi Blickenstaff) to develop a new show. Which turns out to be this show. The one you're watching.
It's as if we're seeing the creative process unfold, documentary-style, in real time -- if real time were condensed to 90 minutes.
Stumped for an original idea and reluctant to adapt an existing movie or other source, they find themselves transcribing their casual conversations, off-the-cuff complaints, professional insecurities, creative larks and amusing voice mails into a script and song lyrics, which are at once meta and self-referential and charmingly navel-gazing.
It's smart and funny and catty, and conveys the ouroboros of playwriting -- the snake eating its tail as they gain entry into a music theater festival, then land an off-Broadway run (adding these details to the script with each new progression), and finally, after much angst and frayed nerves ( "'I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing," they sing, "than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing") make it to Broadway in 2008.
A mini-musical about major ambitions, the whole thing feels deeply personal and playfully absurd, and it is just as revealing about what it means to be struggling for a career in theater.
The original production starred the actual writers and their two friends. Subsequent regional productions do not, and the current Chicago incarnation from Brown Paper Box, directed by M. William Panek, has a lot going for it. The entire cast is very good (Matt Frye's Hunter in particular feels like a fully realized, fully flawed personality) but it is Neala Barron who stands out as Susan, a corporate minion by day who voices every dissatisfaction and self-doubt that crosses her mind with a pointed sarcasm. Barron's performance reveals all the vulnerability beneath those priceless one-liners as well.
REVIEW: "Title of Show" by Brown Paper Box
3 STARS
Through Aug. 16 at Rivendell Theatre, 5779 N. Ridge Ave.; tickets are $25 at www.brownpaperbox.org
