In the beginning, there was the novel by Nicholas Sparks. Same title as the musical which is based on the book–a runaway best seller. A consortium of over twenty producers (investors) joined Kevin McCollum and Kurt Deutsch in adapting it into a Musical, and now here it is playing at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway. That is no mean achievement, particularly as it features a creative staff of disparate first timers Bekah Brunstetter on Book and Ingrid Michaelson as Composer of the music and lyrics. There are two directors, Michael Greif and Scheme Williams,. Each get equal billing so I can’t imagine who contributed what to the highly attractive visuals. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a pairing as it’s my experience that the Director is the one with final word on casting, design of scenery, costume, and lighting, There are often assistant directors on board along with choreographers, and here there is Katie Spelman. But The Notebook is not a dance musical, so I assume her work has more to do with movement than with dance. In fact, all the elements in this show are fresh and new; and I report here that a young and eager audience at the performance I attended on March 21 responded as vigorously as if it were a rock concert.
The stage was artfully designed and lit, and the story was very well acted by a company of singer-actors who delivered first rate characterizations telling the tale of a struggling romance that weathers adversity and culminates in the touching conclusion. The production is brave and daring by casting the two lovers with actors who embody the couple over three periods of their lifetime without regard to the actors’ different skin tones, heights, and builds. The shared humanity of the players is all that is required.
At least six actors play other supporting characters. Andrea Burns is featured as the nurse caring for the oldest Allie as well as playing her caring mother in earlier times. She has a short musical solo that is very moving–a gentle song called “Don’t You Worry.” At least four of the twenty songs are sung by the Joy Woods playing Middle Allie, and they end with that familiar last note with head thrown back, throat put into belt mode, with that final note that always earns a roar of approval. There is a sound designer listed in the program, but here we are in a Broadway theatre and unable to understand much of the spoken dialogue in the more intimate book scenes and many of the lyrics. We don’t long for major amplification, but voice projection would help a lot.
Of course it’s possible that the Broadway of old is simply disappearing, and the young audiences who are beginning to discover this new sound may want something totally different onstage. They certainly seem to have embraced subject matter that would have been the property of high drama in the past–stories like “West Side Story”–or the seamy side of life as in “Chicago”. I Melody and laughter and exciting dance will always be welcome, but I wish ‘The Notebook” luck in appealing to a mass audience. As of right now, it’s become difficult for a new musical to find enough of an interested public to manage the high costs of this new age. The composers and lyricists of the Golden Age are just about gone, and the group coming on to replace them will need to progress as Rodgers moved on from Hart to Hammerstein, or as Fred Ebb moved on from Paul Klein to John Kander. I hope there are people out there feeling as I do about the importance of melody and lyrics in musical theatre which America helped to invent and flourish. It’s true that Steven Sondheim opened doors for the highly original Lin-Manuel Miranda. We have the performers now. We have the directors and choreographers and designers. What we need now are more lyricists and composers who can send us soaring.