Theater Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . . .
From Here, a disposable musical brought to New York’s Signature Center by the Renaissance Theatre Company of Orlando, Florida, is the kind of production that makes you wonder just about where on your “worst shows of the year” list it belongs. Defiantly “Pride”-oriented (the single page handout serving as a program, but requiring the QR code to get details, is called a “Gaybill,” this well-intentioned but gauchely conceived show—with book, score, and direction by Donald Rupe—wants to somehow memorialize the horrifying 2016 slaughter of 49 revelers at Pulse (a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida), but isn’t quite sure how to do it.
Rupe’s approach is to create a gay rom-com situation mingled with a conventional mother-son conflict set among the Orlando queer community (mainly male but with a pair of lesbians thrown in), each a cliché stereotype on the “limp wrist” spectrum. The whiny son, Daniel (Blake Aburn, mediocre), calls his mother, Becca (Becca Southworth, competent), on the phone every day via lyrics repeating the phrase, “Hey ma” . . . only for her to ignore his calls.
The point appears to be that she turned against him when he came out of the closet. However, when we eventually meet her, there’s little to suggest she’s anything but a supportive mother trying to come to terms with her son’s latter-day confession. The blame really resides in Daniel’s late father, whose car crash death is vaguely linked to his depression about his son’s revelation.
Whatever. The family dynamic is poorly dramatized and musicalized, our chief guide being the irritatingly self-pitying Daniel, who narrates the events, breaking the fourth wall. Often on the brink of tears, and with a tendency to pontificate on poetic thoughts, like those concerning the passage of time, he’s your standard stage gay male stereotype, just as there used to be stage Dutchmen, stage Irishmen, and the like.
Preoccupied with appearance, age (he’s a reluctant 34), and pop culture, he goes from boyfriend to boyfriend, fond of casual sex, indulging in booze and recreational drugs, frequenting gay bars, and hanging with a colorful assortment of similarly hackneyed buddies, from swishy men with eyelid glitter to the superficially macho sporting ripped jeans. “Bitch” is so pervasive a part of these characters’ vocabulary that even Becca eventually spouts it to show off her newfound maternal coolness.
So what does this have to do with the mass shootings at Pulse? Late in the play, after we’ve witnessed Daniel’s breakup with his boyfriend, Michael (Kyle Wilkinson, covering for Jullien Aponte when I attended*); his new affair with Ricky (Omar Cardona) from Puerto Rico; his friendships with loyal characters such as cabaret singer Jordan (Michelle Coben), a straight woman who sings a memorably bad song about wishing to be gay (“Homos/Have good chromosomos.” Ugh!); the loss of his teaching job (dispensed with in a throwaway line); and his reconciliation with his mom, Daniel gets a call about the tragedy as it’s unfolding.
Soon the entire cast gathers at Daniel’s apartment to lament the massacre, even though none of the group was involved. No matter, they’ve congregated to cement the show’s principle message, captured in the song “There For You,” which is about how strong the gay community is because everyone is there for everyone else, a point repeatedly emphasized. This lugubrious lamentation goes on and on as the play’s intermissionless hour and 45 minutes drag, and each chance to end the self-indulgent pain is overlooked.
We even get a postmortem speech from Daniel on how well Orlando has recovered since 2016, almost as if the Pulse shootings served a valuable purpose in getting the town back on its feet. On the other hand, nary a word about the anti-LBGTQ+ policies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is so much as whispered. Fear of reprisal?
Rupe’s music has one or two promising numbers, but most of the songs range from generic to weak to downright awful. There are enough big, melismatic notes to show off a few singers’ vocal power (Omar Cardona’s, for example) and get an audience of TV singing competition fans to shout ecstatically; but the lyrics, like the script itself, rarely exceed banality. Nor do they always rhyme.
The less said about Rupe’s uninspired direction and Adonus Mabry’s bland choreography the better. Philip Lupo’s set, like the play, has two personalities. The first part is little more than an upstage platform for the four-musician band, with an empty downstage space to which several chairs are added as needed. Lupo relies on his lights to differentiate one scene from another. Then, for no reason other than to underline that the Pulse scenes are essentially a second play, we get Daniel’s realistic living room, the upstage wall flying in to hide the band. J. Marie Bailey (credited as Jason M. Bailey for the orchestrations and arrangements) provides a constantly changing wardrobe—some of it flamboyantly outré, but most of it quotidian—for the 10-member cast.
The cast, which is not untalented, gamely plugs away with its clichéd material, and, while there are no standouts, they do capture the spirit of a like-minded ensemble who believe in what From Here (meaning, “from Orlando”) has to offer. Otherwise, the show may be at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre but its contents are nothing more than paste.
* Not having received any notice of a substitution, I assume this on the basis of company photos.
From Here. Through August 11 at the Pershing Square Signature Center/Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre (480 West 42nd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues). www.fromhere.com
Photos: Matthew Murphy
