We stayed up till 1:oo am to get it, but here it is:The NY Times review.
A Musical Attempt to Share Some Secrets of True Love
“How do you do it?” jealous single people often ask happily married couples. The contented partners, in late middle age, usually smile at each other as they spout truisms, but the secret of their success remains nearly as impossible as a solution to the Poincaré conjecture.
Steve Schalchlin and Jim Brochu nonetheless try to share some of the magic in “The Big Voice: God or Merman?,” a chronicle of their own love story, which they wrote and are now performing as a hilarious and utterly enthralling evening of musical theater.
One of the men, as a Roman Catholic boy in Brooklyn, yearned to be pope, but changed his mind when the LP he bought of Ethel Merman in “Annie Get Your Gun” had more heat than Pope Pius XII performing a Gregorian chant. The other, a Baptist adolescent in Arkansas, longed to be an evangelist until he fell in love with music, and his mother told him to write a song. Both endure homophobia, come out and end up in show business and on the same cruise ship in the Bermuda Triangle, where their life together begins in 1985.
Think of two gifted and smart gay men with years of theater stories deploying their considerable talents from the two pianos you happen to have in your living room. Any question you could ask, they answer with a sidesplitting story or a telling anecdote. As these men onstage evoke Arkansas, a cruise ship or Sardi’s, you crack up at their deft mimicry and marvel at the romantic sweep of their songs, emotion catching your throat as you see them navigate AIDS and success, breakup and reconciliation.
Our contemporary embrace of the memoir is a longing for the true adventures of life. The trick is to make memory art without losing the awkwardness that proves authenticity. Here art is achieved with light hands, and the result is a triumphant and very touching song of praise to everyday love and the funky glories of the show business life.
4 comments:
So thrilling to read all these raves for your wonderful show! You two are such great guys (and it sounds like you've surrounded yourselves with excellent colleagues for this) and have worked so hard for this, you absolutely deserve all the praise coming your way.
As for that bizarro review over on a certain theater chat site--well, the guy didn't even seem to have taken in the Baptist aspect at all ("They discovered a shared passion for music and an unhappy history with the Catholic church that brought them together..."). So I guess it's not surprising he was wrong on just about everything else as well. No worries; that voice has already been drowned out by other, bigger, more important voices, singing your praises in 4-part harmony! Yay! Enjoy.
Very, very cool review. I wish I could be there to see the show!
I am talking the show up out here in Olympia and have had a couple of people say they hope to see it.
Wow, this is so amazing! I'm thrilled for you guys!
So amazing! I've been talking up the show here at Harvard and I hope to lead a group down to see it in January. :)
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