See Rock City and Other Destinations continues at the Union Theatre until 30 August.
The trend for the London Fringe to import Off-Broadway successes continues with the Union Theatre’s latest production, which sees an array of characters explore their romantic lives in the shadow of several notable landmarks across America.
Adam Mathias’ book, which won a Drama Desk Award among the 2010 Off-Broadway production’s six nominations, takes the form of a sucession of short stories, each containing one or more musical numbers with lyrics by Mathias and music by Brad Alexander. While this approach allows for a variety of scenarios in which to best showcase the writing duo’s musical efforts, it also makes it harder than usual to invest in the characters and appreciate the emotions the actors are working hard to portray.
The stories themselves are often sweet, though rarely anything less than predictable. Alex Lodge and Nancy Sullivan, as a pair of visitors to the rock formation that is North Carolina’s Rock City, rise above the stuttering, awkward silences to form a sweet tale of people who are attracted to one another, while realising that their outlooks on life are impossibly different.
Another tale of three sisters reuniting to scatter their father’s ashes, re-creating the fairytale song he wrote for them, has a lovely retro feel to its music and a personal dynamic of which one is itching to see more. Joshua LeClair impresses mightily with his engaging performance as a UFOlogist whose obsession with looking to the skies is both a reason for, and escape from, his failed relationship, although his story suffers from being broken up into several pieces.
Other stories fare less well. The two privileged New York schoolkids who abscond for a day trip to off-season Coney Island plays out in a predictable manner, as would-be alpha males Richard Dawes and Barney Glover discover their mutual, more sensitive attraction to each other in the darkened ghost train. And the final story of a nervous bride being taunted with ways to make an exit – from life, as much as marriage, it is strongly implied – fails both as a ghoulish version of It’s a Wonderful Life and as an implication that her tour guide, who has been onstage throughout as a silent observer, is somehow mystically involved in all the stories.
Ultimately, as with any short story anthology, comedy sketch show or other collection of fiction, each audience member may find different sections appeal. Alexander and Mathias’ musical is a sometimes engaging, often overly winsome curio that, while it is unlikely to set the London fringe alight, does provide a little warmth as the evenings outside start to cool.
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