Anyone who rushes to the Menier expecting to get more of the kind of music for which American composer Mark Sonnenblick recently won his Oscar is going to get a shock.
The Academy Award was for the electro pop power ballad Golden and was created for the film which, surprisingly to some, became Netflix’s most watched movie, KPop Demon Hunters.
To say that Golden is nothing like the songs in Mark Sonnenblick’s cabaret club-set musical, which are performed with tender power by Broadway star Ben Platt, is to take understatement to new extremes.
That said not even Sonnenblick is associated with the Great American Songbook from which his songs might have been drawn if they weren’t all written for this show. He is better known for the score to the musical version of The Devil Wears Prada for which he and Shaina Taub wrote the lyrics to Elton John’s music who, one might glancingly notice, is the first non-Jew to be mentioned in this review.
Whoever said that musical theatre is not as Jewish as it used to be will be reassured that over-representation is still alive and kicking.
Like many a tune in the American Songbook Sonnenblick’s have lyrical and melodic wit and convey the emotional rush and torment that goes with falling in and out of love. However, unlike the classic canon they bring to mind, these songs were created for men to sing about another man, a dynamic that was barely legal in 1960s New York where the show is set.
In a sharp, pleasingly period shiny suit Platt’s open-hearted Trevor explains that he is grieving for Arthur, the composer with whom he began his career and who died earlier that day. Arthur’s songs were not only written for Trevor to sing, they were written with Trevor in mind.
Platt, who won a Tony for creating the title role in Dear Evan Hanson, delivers the numbers with a Piaf-like intensity. But it is during the chat with his accompanist (Gregor Milne on the piano) who doubles as Arthur, where we learn about the relationship and the politically charged time during which it blossomed.
Although the gay rights movement was beginning to gather pace, the dilemma for the duo was whether to tweak the song’s lyrics so that they become heteronormative crowd-pleasers.
Arthur is dead against the compromise. It would weaken the integrity of his songs, he passionately argues. But he is a man living out of time. The songs, supported in David Cromer’s production by an excellent five-piece band, have been born into a world that wants folk and rock not dazzling Cole Porter genius.
Sonnenblick’s book keeps a reveal or two up its sleeve which gives the evening a bit of plot.
But the potency of the show’s 90 uninterrupted minutes is derived from being in and up close in an intimate space with a big Broadway talent such as Platt.
Midnight at The Never Get
Menier Chocolate Factory
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.