Be More Chill – The Pershing Square Signature Center, New York

Picture: Maria Baranova

Be More Chill continues at The Irene Diamond Stage, The Pershing Square Signature Center, New York until 30 September 2018 and is planned for a March opening on Broadway.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Jeremy Heere feels he’s unwanted, unloved, a total loser. In short, he’s your typical teenager, and he’s the anti-hero of Be More Chill, the Off-Broadway musical sensation that has been pulling in hordes of youthful crowds.

In fact, the show’s nine-week limited run was nearly sold out by its first preview on 26 July, and later tickets for a one-week extension were snapped up in something like a wink. The planned move to Broadway in March was announced on 6 September.

The Broadway ambitions are fairly evident in the top-drawer production values, along with nearly a score of producers, not to mention the plentitude of merchandise – T-shirts, CDs and books – on sale in the lobby.

And the show itself is a hyper-energised adventure, familiar enough in its teenage angst but revved up with sci-fi, high-tech and even horror movie embellishments. The score, with music and lyrics by Joe Iconis, who gained notice with some songs for the former backstage musical television series Smash, melds thumping pop rock with a dramatic story-telling élan.

The book by Joe Tracz, the staging by director Stephen Brackett and choreography by Chase Brock have the ingratiating cast jumping, hopping, singing and acting their hearts out (or in the more common vernacular, their asses off), and apparently enjoying every moment of it.

How did it all start? The show, based on the cult 2004 young adult novel by the late Ned Vizzini, was commissioned by Two River Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey, that New York-neighbouring state where stories about ordinary Joes are often located, as is Be More Chill.

The premiere in 2015 was fairly uneventful, but Two River made the fortuitous decision to preserve it in an original cast album.  That’s where fandom began, as the album caught fire on the internet. It’s claimed that the album has been streamed more than 170 million times and videos of the cast, as well as fans performing the songs, have become video favourites.

And judging by the performance reviewed, the show’s quirky fantasy of a plot seems to work as a catharsis for young audiences. Things jolt into action when Jeremy (Will Roland) is told about a mysterious pill made in Japan and known as The Squip, which when downed with a drink of Mountain Dew soda, the green version, releases a quantum computer into the brain.

Once activated, The Squip (personified in sinister fashion by Jason Tam) works as a rather domineering life coach, directing its possessor in all the devious ways that will make him or her popular, not just cool but “chill”.

And so it works with Jeremy, once he buys a pill from a mysterious pusher in the back room of a shoe store and swallows it. He signs up for the school play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reset by the ambitious drama teacher in an apocalyptic alien-invaded, zombie-inhabited future. The Squip helps Jeremy in his sudden pursuit of Christine Canigula (a delightfully offbeat Stephanie Hsu), the school’s serious but sweet theatre queen, whose roles have already included Blanche Dubois.

It also helps Jeremy rise to the level of the school’s movers and shakers. The femmes include Chloe Valentine (Katlyn Carlson), the most popular girl in school; Brooke Lohst (usually played by Lauren Marcus but at the performance attended by understudy Talia Suskauer), the second most popular but insecure, and Jenna Rolan (Tiffany Mann), the school gossip.

The guys are Jake Dillinger (Britton Smith), who’s described in the script’s character list as the personification of “high school awesomeness”, and Rich Goranski (Gerard Canonico), the short-statured school bully, who has taken the pill earlier and is the one who tells Jeremy about it.

The Squip’s rules of popularity also mean that Jeremy must abandon his long-time best friend and fellow video game player, the nerdy Michael Mell (George Salazar). The pill also makes Jeremy even snippier than usual to his work-at-home Dad (Jason SweetTooth Williams, who also plays the drama teacher and shoe store pill dispenser).

It doesn’t take long to discover that The Squip’s intentions are nefarious. It wants to take over, well, if not the whole world, then at least the entire school body. Deactivating becomes the goal, but before it happens and the whole gang celebrates the idea to listen only to “the normal kind” of voices in their heads, there’s a raucous Halloween house party, which ends with the house burning down, and a chaotic performance of the updated Midsummer Night’s Dream.

That all this stuff seems to make emotional sense can be attributed to Brackett’s brisk and imaginative direction, giving you little or no time to question the logic or veracity of the hectic proceedings plus the truth and conviction that mark the performances, along with the energy and merriment.

As Jeremy, Roland gives things a sympathetic centre with his voice pitched to just the proper non-annoying amount of adenoidal nasality; his longings, confusions and Squip-induced triumphs are equally engaging. He also endows the fellow with a surprising reservoir of passion, and the go-for-broke delivery of his big Act I closer, ‘Loser Geek Whatever’ may well call to mind the diva triumphs of a Merman, Peters, LuPone or Staunton bringing the house down with Gypsy’s ‘Rose’s Turn.’

Salazar’s Michael similarly scores with an abundance of affability-cum-sensitivity. His defining moment comes with his extended solo, ‘Michael in the Bathroom,’ explaining his need to hang out in the WC rather than mingle with the crowd during the fateful Halloween party. The song, as performed by Salazar, has become a break-out hit online.

Another highpoint comes with ‘The Smartphone Hour’, which might have you recalling Bye Bye Birdie, as Mann’s Jenna leads the production number with apparently inexhaustible vitality, getting her pals on the phone to spread the news of the Halloween house party conflagration.

The techo-look of Beowulf Boritt’s handsome set adds to the with-it aura, made vivid with Tyler Micoleau’s lighting and the eye-popping projections by Alex Basco Koch that frequently explode on it. The costumes by Bobby Frederick Tilley II well define the stratification of high school society.

Charlie Rosen’s orchestrations and Ryan Rumery’s sound design keep the high-powered efforts of the six-piece orchestra, conducted by music director and keyboard player Emily Marshall, generally within tolerable volume limits for older ears.

Those ears, by the way, may be the ones more evident in the seats once the show hits the Main Stem. For the younger crowd, Be More Chill will be facing some stiff competition from established Broadway blockbusters aiming at the same target audience, such as Mean Girls and Dear Evan Hansen, not to mention the venerable Wicked. Perhaps, The Squip will help.

Ron Cohen