The bad news about High Fidelity, the musical based on Nick Hornby’s novel (later a 2000 film), is The Wedding Singer, the musical based on the 1998 film (but not a novel), closes after the Dec. 31 matinee.
Comparisons aren’t the point, but it’s worth noting some similarities. Both shows aim to follow in the Broadway musical comedy tradition by using music one rarely hears on Broadway—in High Fidelity, a guitar-heavy punk-lite score (music by Tom Kitt, lyrics by Amanda Green) not unlike late-’80s pop. Both shows have major and minor love stories and nakedly attempt to woo the remains of Broadway’s heterosexual male audience demographic. But whereas The Wedding Singer has character development, heart and kitsch, High Fidelity’s monaural values barely hold a candle to the great charm of Hornby’s book.
Cute, scruffy Rob (Will Chase) ekes out a living running a Williamsburg vinyl shop. His girlfriend Laura (Jenn Colella) has lived with him for four years and is done with him—something about Rob not being happy, something about sorting things out. It’s like Morrissey sang “Dial A Cliché” and book writer David Lindsay-Abaire did so. Most of what we learn about Laura, we learn from Rob. “She’s a lawyer, if you can believe it,” he confides. “Laura worked for Legal Aid when she moved in here, but she took a corporate job last month, so she’s all conflicted about selling out.” Or maybe she’s tired of sleeping with a directionless slacker who won’t sell CDs?
“You don’t need to do this, Laura. It was just a fight,” he says.
“Just another fight, you mean,” she bleats. “That’s all we’ve been doing lately. And for the record, last night’s was especially ugly, I thought.”
Insightful, I know. Just as in the novel and film, Rob is all about mix tapes, his dorky and lame top-five lists and blaming his shortcomings on the five ex-girlfriends he introduces after Laura splits. After all, what’s a 30-ish straight guy to do after his girlfriend kicks him to the curb? It’s a Peter Pan pity-party, dude!
Colella sings like an angel and acts the daylights out of the table scraps of dialogue fed to her by Lindsay-Abaire, but she’s really a mystery. When Rob’s friend Liz (the terrific Rachel Stern), has a chat with Laura at the gym, it’s not to probe character and add texture, but to amplify a visual joke that isn’t rollicking to begin with. Later, Laura hooks up with the yogi-like Ian (Jeb Brown) for some ethereal and tantric readjustment.
High Fidelity is one of those musicals where the major characters are beaten with boring sticks, which means the interesting stories are those with which we spend the least time. At the record store, Rob has various employees: tall, shy, dorky Dick (Christian Anderson); short, gregarious, dorky Barry (Jay Klaitz). As things progress, Dick meets cute with Anna (Kirsten Wyatt) and sings a great song, “It’s No Problem.” And Barry, who plays no instrument but craves making music, finds himself in a band that starts out sounding like Nina Hagen and ends sounding like a dream, which helps facilitate the inevitable happy ending for Rob and Laura.
Other songs are all over the map. Green, the daughter of Broadway lyricist and book writer Adolph Green, has a neat way with a rhyme but rarely uses her lyrics to—again—flesh out character. And while Kitt’s music is versatile, especially Act 1’s “Number Five with a Bullet” and Act 2’s “Cryin’ in the Rain,” there’s far too much filler.
Chase brings to the role of Rob the same charisma he brought to Broadway as one of the Lennons in Lennon two years ago. But he’d better pick better projects or some of us are going to walk out on him.
Open run. Imperial Theatre, 249 W. 45th St. (betw. B’way & 8th Ave.), 212-239-6200; $41.25-111.25; $26.25 rush lottery.
