 |
| The 77th Tony Awards, June 16, 2024 |
For a short moment, when the kids were in their adolescence, we had a subscription. During the 2017-2018 season we had the chance to see the musicals Waitress and Hamilton and also Stephen Karam’s Tony-award winning play The Humans. And it was weird. On Broadway, the show, which takes place in a realistically rendered Lower East Side duplex apartment, played to an audience of one thousand. The Connor Palace seats nearly three times that, and seated as we were in the balcony and off to the side it was like watching someone’s Thanksgiving dinner from the far end of a football field.
Sometimes, subscribers get confused by these theatrical offerings, the ones without songs. Even I was surprised, though not unpleasantly, to learn that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was not a musical. That one, at least, was so full of visual stimuli that our seating was actually a blessing.
 |
| Andrew Gombas as Peter |
One old dude went on social media to decry his experience as “HORRIBLE” (yes, all caps) going on to report that “AT INTERMISSION THE AUDIENCE LEFT IN DROVES!! THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION.” He concluded his rant with, “I am sorry to be so negative,” which I do not actually believe.
Before I go any further, I would like to report that not only is Stereophonic a good play, I think it is excellent. I saw it twice, the first week of the run, and then again last Saturday night. More on my experiences in a moment. Suffice to say, when thousands of folks buy into a series of productions, the vast majority of which are musicals, and you are presented with a show about a rock band, you might expect a rock musical. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some folks thought they were going to see a Fleetwood Mac cover band or something.
 |
| "Hedwig & The Angry Inch" Cleveland Public Theatre, 2001 |
Stereophonic was advertised as a play, and it is a play with music, which is not the same thing as a musical. What else can one say? How else can one advertise? Except to emphasize that Stereophonic received the most Tony nominations in history, and even won the Tony for Best Play. Were they also supposed to tell stupid people not to come?
I was excited to see this show for several reasons which I will (eventually) enumerate. A couple years ago the podcast Decoder Ring with Willa Paskin produced “Making Real Music for a Fake Band,” an episode centering on the development of Adjmi’s new play. The conundrum; playwright wants to produce a work about the creation of an album which will eventually be regarded as one of the greatest of all time. If we are to hear that music, it better sound pretty good, right? And Adjmi is not a songwriter. But he found one in Will Butler, late of Arcade Fire, and together they wrote songs like Drive and Masquerade for the show which do amazingly capture that mid-70s Malibu sound.
 |
| Jack Barrett & Steven Lee Johnson "Stereophonic" National Tour, 2026 |
We saw the legendary 2001 Cleveland Public Theatre production of Hedwig, starring Dan Folino and Alison Garrigan, and soon after the film starring creator John Cameron Mitchell. The songs, co-written by Mitchell and Steven Trask, are entirely original, they do not sound like other songs, but they owe so much to the style, the substance – the vibe, if you will – of David Bowie, Elton John, Marc Bolan and so many others, that they trick you into thinking you already know them, and even love them, the very first time you hear them. And that’s what Adjmi and Butler were going for.
I have also written a couple songs for my plays (plays that are not musicals) including the lyrics for “Come” and “Doctor” (music by Dennis Yurich) for the play The Vampyres, and both lyrics and music for “If You Were a Train” which was written for The Right Room. For that last I set myself a simple task, to create what David Byrne might call a “naive melody” or somewhat repetitious. I even included a fake biography in the program in an attempt to lead people to believe it was a real song by a real artist.
I always planned to see Stereophonic, the podcast was very persuasive, and anyway, I like plays. When I then found out my friend Andrew Gombas is an understudy on the tour, and that he was scheduled to play the role of Peter (do I get sued now if I call Peter the Lindsey Buckingham role) the last weekend of the Cleveland stand, I got a ticket to see it then.
Then I lucked into a pair of tickets for the first week of performances. Seeking someone to join me, I asked my friend Sarah, who is a singer and interpreter of late 20th century rock songs. She accepted the invitation gleefully, and over dinner I asked what she knew about the show and she told me she’d already seen it three times, including on Broadway. She loves this show!
During intermission David, one of my new work colleagues, joined us for a short chat, and I was intrigued. Sarah knew the show well, it was new to me but I was familiar with the source material (i.e. Rumours) and for David, who is in his mid-20s, it was all something new. I was very curious about his opinion and while he was engaged he wasn’t sure where it all was going. After we three had drinks at Parnell’s where Sarah said something which stuck with me: Think of it like Chekhov. And that made great sense, because, like Chekhov, Stereophonic isn’t about plot, but about interesting characters and how they bounce off each other, in search of an elusive happiness. Chekhov is a vibe. And if you can’t dig that, well. You aren’t going to like it.
And by the way, happy birthday, Anton Chekhov.
I was very much looking forward to sharing the piece with Toni at the end of the run (and to see Andrew in it) but first we had the chance to see a special event, hosted by Playhouse Square, featuring the entire company, playing classic tunes from the 1970s like Rebel Rebel, Ventura Highway and a breathtaking reinterpretation of Being Alive from “Company.” The absence of songs by a certain bi-national quintet was not a surprise.
Gombas was Emcee for the event, recalling how he had gotten his professional start as an actor-teacher with the school residency program, even calling out to me in the house to ask if it was in fact that very building we were in in which we rehearsed, and indeed it was.
Toni held off on listening to the songs that were to be created during the telling of the story of Stereophonic, but hearing each of these artists sharing their talents that evening meant she was even more excited for the actual production.
So what, after all, is Stereophonic about? This is what it is not about; it is not an episode of Behind The Music, a lascivious kiss-and-tell in which we are witness to orgiastic binges of passion and drugs and the total destruction of human souls and minds. No one throws a keyboard through the great glass window in that beautiful set. To the contrary, there’s even a character arc in which one goes from booze swilling degenerate into insufferable (not quite) ascetic.
No, it is – and if you have been paying attention, you know why I am attracted to this piece – about craft, about the act of creation, and how interesting characters bounce off of each other in the pursuit of that craft. Everyone is serious about the work, and they all have different ideas about how to make it happen.
The creation of Rumours is legendary, due in large part to the disintegration of the romantic relationships between the two couples in the group. But the group didn’t disintegrate, at least not right away. They even leaned into the controversy, agreeing to that Rolling Stone cover that shows them all in the same bed together. But this play doesn’t take place in bed, it takes place in the recording studio, and in that way it is a “locked door” play in which the players cannot depart until they are through completing their task, namely recording the album.
This is a story of a very specific time, when record labels would throw absurd amounts of cash at a band of young artists, giving them all the time they need with access to the best equipment available (as well as access to gallons of booze and mounds of blow) in the hopes of creating solid gold. For better or for worse, this particular time will not come again.
And time is a character in this piece. This is perhaps why a lot of subscribers “LEFT IN DROVES!!” at intermission, because the first act by itself is ninety minutes. Because that’s the time it takes. And when the music plays, it sounds really good.
 |
| Matt Zitelli & Tim Keo "The Vampyres" Cleveland Public Theatre, 2005 |
I always planned to see Stereophonic, the podcast was very persuasive, and anyway, I like plays. When I then found out my friend Andrew Gombas is an understudy on the tour, and that he was scheduled to play the role of Peter (do I get sued now if I call Peter the Lindsey Buckingham role) the last weekend of the Cleveland stand, I got a ticket to see it then.
Then I lucked into a pair of tickets for the first week of performances. Seeking someone to join me, I asked my friend Sarah, who is a singer and interpreter of late 20th century rock songs. She accepted the invitation gleefully, and over dinner I asked what she knew about the show and she told me she’d already seen it three times, including on Broadway. She loves this show!
And by the way, happy birthday, Anton Chekhov.
I was very much looking forward to sharing the piece with Toni at the end of the run (and to see Andrew in it) but first we had the chance to see a special event, hosted by Playhouse Square, featuring the entire company, playing classic tunes from the 1970s like Rebel Rebel, Ventura Highway and a breathtaking reinterpretation of Being Alive from “Company.” The absence of songs by a certain bi-national quintet was not a surprise.
Gombas was Emcee for the event, recalling how he had gotten his professional start as an actor-teacher with the school residency program, even calling out to me in the house to ask if it was in fact that very building we were in in which we rehearsed, and indeed it was.
 |
| Eli Bridges, Christopher Mowood & Andrew Gombas January 12, 2026 |
So what, after all, is Stereophonic about? This is what it is not about; it is not an episode of Behind The Music, a lascivious kiss-and-tell in which we are witness to orgiastic binges of passion and drugs and the total destruction of human souls and minds. No one throws a keyboard through the great glass window in that beautiful set. To the contrary, there’s even a character arc in which one goes from booze swilling degenerate into insufferable (not quite) ascetic.
No, it is – and if you have been paying attention, you know why I am attracted to this piece – about craft, about the act of creation, and how interesting characters bounce off of each other in the pursuit of that craft. Everyone is serious about the work, and they all have different ideas about how to make it happen.
This is a story of a very specific time, when record labels would throw absurd amounts of cash at a band of young artists, giving them all the time they need with access to the best equipment available (as well as access to gallons of booze and mounds of blow) in the hopes of creating solid gold. For better or for worse, this particular time will not come again.
And time is a character in this piece. This is perhaps why a lot of subscribers “LEFT IN DROVES!!” at intermission, because the first act by itself is ninety minutes. Because that’s the time it takes. And when the music plays, it sounds really good.
No comments:
Post a Comment