Review: ‘Life After’ at Goodman Theatre is a stirring musical about a grieving teenager — a new show that’s going places
The central character happens to be a teenager, but anyone who has suffered the loss of a close family member will recognize the anguish of young Alice in “Life After,” the very intense musical at the Goodman Theatre with book, music and lyrics by an immensely talented new compositional voice, a 31-year-old Canadian named Britta Johnson.
The emerging show, directed by Annie Tippe, has a commercial producer attached, a top-drawer cast of superb vocalists, a Broadway-sized set and, shall we say, clear if tacit aspirations to plow a territory akin to “Next to Normal,” “Fun Home” and other small, expressionistic musicals rooted in the intersection of familial love and pain.
Alice blames herself for her father’s death. She wishes she had not had that last fight. She tries to resist a brain fog as well-meaning but annoying people try to express their sympathy in ham-fisted ways. And, above all, she fights a paradox inherent to her sorrow: In order to move on, she has to move on but to move on inherently means denying the centrality to her life of the person she just lost.
In his excellent play about grief, “Rabbit Hole,” David Lindsay-Abaire constructed an entire drama around that paradox that often tears the bereaved apart, one from another. Johnson’s prismatic musical study of the impact of a bereavement occupies similar thematic territory and comes with comparably clear-eyed understanding. But she has structured her expressionistic 90-minute musical as a mystery.
Alice wants to know how her dad died. Frank was killed in a car crash, we learn at the beginning of the show, but he was in a location his family did not expect. Why?
So, in essence, we’re on a twin-tracked narrative train watching the reluctant detective Alice try to deal with her feelings surrounding her father’s death even as she attempts to figure out the specifics.
We see flashbacks with her likable, lively father (Paul Alexander Nolan), hear Alice’s internal voice through her talks with a chorus-like trio of “Furies” (played by Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Lauryn Hobbs and Chelsea Williams) and we see her interactions with her mom (played by Bryonha Marie Parham), her sister, Hannah (Lucy Panush) and a teacher (Jen Sese) who may or may not have something to do with her father’s location.
Fundamentally, though, this is a show structured as a journey toward understanding: Alice slowly learns that the events behind her dad’s death, uncovered or not, are in the past and thus now of little help to her. And it is in this matter that, to my mind, this highly promising musical needs the most work. Right now, Alice’s crucial realization of truth is buried (musically and dramaturgically) and thus the message of the show does not pay off for those who have witnessed Alice’s journey. That should be the moment when tears flow in the audience. And it could be, if foregrounded. Frankly, that will require Tippe’s kinetic production to settle down sooner than it does. Both direction and choreography (from Ann Yee) are supremely well thought out and visually dynamic, rushing us from moment to moment in an often exciting way, but once the cards are really on the table, the cuts and shuffles needs to pause for the quietness of the heart.
I suppose there also is the question of whether a 16-year-old and her grief is enough of a hook on which to hang a major musical. (Todd Rosenthal’s epic, soaring set, which has echoes of “August: Osage County,” does not imply studio simplicity and Sarafina Bush’s costumes are not exactly the Ontarian everyday.) I think Alice can and should remain at the center, but her mom and sister (both superbly played) remain underwritten. Musicals usually work best when we see a small community, reaching beyond an individual, reaching out for new bonds. More familial interaction and shared emotion also could remove a few too many scenes of Alice staring at something; we need to stay in her head in real time and the talented lead actress needs to move further in that direction.
All that said, if you fear for the form of new musicals, here you have a fully original, strikingly nonderivative show from scratch, compositionally formidable, closer to chamber opera than pop pastiche and lush, melodic and musically haunting to boot. It’s near through-composed (it could all the way) and it’s a very sophisticated affair that’s not only about something to which everyone can relate but a topic that really matters in the world. Long in gestation, “Life After” borrows from nothing except the timeless artistic desire to make sense of life and loss. Watch it and you’ll be on Alice’s crew, filing back through your own experiences and wishing her understanding and peace.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: Life After (3 stars)
When: Through July 17
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $25-$80 at 312-443-3800 and www.goodmantheatre.org
