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| Conor Ryan and Kate Baldwin Photo by Carol Rosegg |
We New York theatergoers like our psychologically damaged
and damaging characters to be writ large:
our Phantoms, our Sweeney Todds, our Norma Desmonds. So what to make of the Keen Company’s
lovingly-conceived revival of Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald’s decidedly
under-wrought 1995 musical John & Jen, where it is neurosis rather than
psychosis that is under the microscope?
To begin with, front and center, are the performances of the show’s two
stars, the always splendid Kate Baldwin (Finian’s Rainbow and Lippa’s own Big
Fish) and Conor Ryan (Cinderella and Fortress of Solitude). They share the
stage and sing their way through a time period covering 40 years (from the
1950s to the 1990s) in the two-hour, two-act production that has virtually no
dialog outside of the songs.
Both performers acquit themselves well with what amounts to
a work that is more of a song cycle than a musical. For this production—in the appropriately
intimate space of the Clurman Theater at Theatre Row—they are nicely abetted by
Sydney Maresca’s costume design (lots of quick costume changes throughout) and
the excellent musicianship of pianist Lily Ling and cellist Melanie Mason, all
under Jonathan Silverstein’s direction. Perhaps
Steven C. Kemp’s abstract set may be a bit jarring, but it does provide a
variety of performance areas for the pair.
While there isn’t a great deal of depth to the storyline,
Ms. Baldwin’s character, Jen, does undergo an arc of development as she sets
out to right the wrongs she believes she has committed. Mr. Ryan’s character, John, is more
limited. That’s because there are two
different “Johns,” an uncle and his nephew, each of whom is depicted from birth
though the teenage years. Therein lies
the lean and gently poignant plot, a tale of sister and brother, and of mother
and son.
In Act I, Jen and John are siblings, growing up with an
abusive father. Jen, the older of the
two by six years, forms a bond of mutual protection with John (“I’ll never let
him hurt you; trust me!” Jen pledges in one form or another multiple times
throughout Act I). That vow holds until
Jen becomes a teenager, starts to rebel, and ultimately leaves home for college
and New York City, where she quickly embraces the lifestyle of the 1960s—sex,
drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and all that is anti-establishment. When she reluctantly returns
home for a visit, she finds that John, left to his own devices, has come to embrace his father’s values. In the hopes of winning Dad’s approval, he has enlisted in the U. S. Navy just in
time to be shipped out to Vietnam. When Jen announces she is joining her boyfriend
to start a new life in Canada, the pair have a falling out that is never
reconciled due to John’s death in battle.
Act II opens with Jen newly returned to the U. S. with her
young son, whom she has named John in memory of her brother, after breaking up
with the boy’s father. She is resolved to making good her broken promise to her
brother by never letting anything bad happen to her son. But her determination has turned her into one
of those “helicopter” parents, always hovering over John until he, like his
mother before him, wants nothing more than to escape. The show ends on the day of John’s high
school graduation. He has been accepted
into Columbia University’s writing program, though Mom is aghast at the idea of
his leaving for New York, the way she had done many years before. Will Jen finally be able to let go and
move on with her own life?
John & Jen is structured so as to keep everything low keyed
and within the range of normal neurotic family dysfunction. While Jen and her
brother may have grown up in an abusive household, we aren’t given much information as to how bad it was for them. No monsters
lurking in the shadows. No Carrie-like
psychotic meltdowns. Jen’s sense of
guilt is predicated entirely on her having left her brother behind to “hold
down the fort” (one of the song titles) when she sought a new life for
herself.
Musically, the songs are designed to serve the story. There is none of the sweeping romanticism
that Mr. Lippa would later use for the love story that lies at the heart of Big
Fish. This is a different kind of love
story, examining the love of a woman for her brother, for her son, and, finally,
for herself. The score reflects this
kind of interplay by evoking moments as they occur, without grand gestures or
flourishes—the way that lives generally do unfold.
In the end, the best reason to see John & Jen is to experience Mr.
Lippa’s first musical in the pleasurable company of Kate Baldwin and Conor
Ryan, two gifted performers at different stages of their careers who work
beautifully together.
Feel free to share this blog with your friends, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.
Feel free to share this blog with your friends, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.
