Next Thing You Know is presented by American Musical Theatre Live! Paris at the Highlander Pub Bar and continues until 9 July.
Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★
Off-Broadway is taking Paris by storm, thanks to the effort of American Musical Theatre Live! Paris. After Edges by Pasek and Paul and the Jason Robert Brown cycle last year, the venue’s latest offering, Next Thing You Know, is a chamber piece musical by Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham, originally produced at CAP 21 in New York City and also seen in 2013 at the Landor Theatre in London.
Salzman and Cunningham have written a bittersweet show about four New Yorkers laughing, loving and drinking their way through the big questions that face all young hopefuls who wind up the big city. Issues like whether to take a nine to five job or marry a nice guy and settle down are not the stuff great musical books are usually made of, but even more so than at the Landor, the four-piece cast transcends the mediocre story to the point of genius.
First, the setting of The Highlander venue seems natural, since most of the action takes place in a neighbourhood bar, blending New York cabaret-style with British pub theatre, and offering the possibility of direct engagement with the audience.
Tolgay Pekin’s direction is cleverly designed to make the process so natural that the audience actually gets the wonderful feeling that they are living in the actual musical, mixing pop with the musical theatre style. Some songs, like ‘Morning After Omelet’, ‘Don’t Say Another Word’, ‘Hungover’ and the title song really stick in your mind and resonate with funny real-life situations.
Miranda Crispin, serving as artistic director of AMT Live!, is the surprise of the evening. Her more than competent performances in The Last Five Years and Songs For a New World last season didn’t show off her comic talent at all, and what a funny comedian she really is! Her character of Lisa, a lesbian bartender, is the best of the play.
The two main characters of Luke and Darren, brilliantly portrayed respectively by Frédéric Brodard and Quentin Bruno, don’t really go beyond the cliches of macho geek cardboard figures. But Brodard and Bruno are such good singers and all-round performers that they manage to make them still believable.
Lauren Berkman, recently seen in Ordinary Days, is a delight throughout as Waverly. It is indeed a blessing to have her grace the thriving Paris Fringe musical scene with her great talent. Performed in English up to 9 July, Next Thing You Know is selling out, a remarkable feat in a city not so far familiar with contemporary Off-Broadway works.
The innovative musical direction of Mathieu Becquerelle, seen earlier this month in the European premiere of the original Philippine-based and London-bound musical Marco Polo: An Untold Story by Rogelio Saldo Chua at the Vingtième Théâtre, also accounts for the success of this not to be missed little gem of a musical.
Patrick Honoré
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.