Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Transport Group’s unlikely and uneven new musical RENASCENCE sounds exultant

• By drediman
• November 4, 2018
• No Comments

The company of Transport Group’s new musical “Renascence” at Abrons Arts Center.

You can always count on Transport Group for unexpected, out-of-the-box theatrical experiences (those of you who saw the theater company’s six-hour, one-man version of Eugene O’Neill’s monster of a play Strange Interlude starring an astonishing David Greenspan last season know what I mean). On paper, the company’s new musical Renascence, which I recently caught at Abrons Arts Center, fits the same quirky profile. Indeed, Transport Group’s latest offering is a conceptual case of the unlikely convergence of two Tony-winning musicals: think Jersey Boys meets Cats, with a dash of immersive theater. In this instance, despite the fascinating premise, the ultimate results are decidedly mixed, but it sure did sound glorious.

Like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, which sets “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” (T.S. Elliot’s anthology of feline profiles) to music, Renascence composer Carmel Dean uses the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s famous anthology of the same name for the lyrics of her score. And like Rick Elice’s book for Jersey Boys, which charts the rise and associated growing pains of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Renascence‘s book writer Dick Scanlan does the same thing by depicting Ms. Millay’s biographical ascent from an inexperienced country girl from rural Maine to the poetry world’s equivalent of a rock star.

First the good news.  Ms. Dean’s score is exquisite – strongly calling to mind the rhapsodic sound of the works of Adam Guettel – particularly as lushly orchestrated by Michael Starobin and superbly sung by the show’s accomplished, strong-voiced cast of six. I’m especially happy to report that the Ms. Millay’s poetry slides gloriously into music theater mode; the show seamlessly marries both forms’ tendencies toward exultant flourishes. However, I did have some misgivings about the production’s lofty artistic ambitions (Transport Group artistic director Jack Cummings III’s staging includes an immersive theatrical coup towards the end of the show that seemed almost unnecessary), which seemed at odds with much of Mr. Scanlan’s straightforward, occasionally dramatically-inert book. Sometimes less is more. As a simply-staged song cycle of Ms. Millay’s poems, the musical would have been more effective.

RECOMMENDED

RENASCENCE
Off-Broadway, Musical
Transport Group at Abrons Arts Center
2 hours, 30 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 17