Photo by Aaron Epstein
The question that has resounded throughout this generally dismal Broadway season has been asked again with the opening of The Story of My Life: What, exactly, makes a Broadway show?
Whatever does, The Story of My Life doesn’t have it. A two-character musical that clocks in at 90 minutes, this Story firmly belongs in an Off-Broadway theater, where the thin plot and exaggerated sentimentality would have a chance to feel fresh and unforced, rather than prepackaged, oversold and overpriced.
Best-selling novelist Tom (Will Chase) has returned to his Frank Capra-esque hometown—It’s a Wonderful Life is beaten to death by book writer Brian Hill—to deliver the eulogy for his boyhood best friend Alvin (Malcolm Gets), one of the many people Tom has jettisoned over the years in an effort to focus on his career. As he grapples with writer’s block, Alvin appears to him and leads him down memory lane through the decades of their increasingly homoerotic friendship.
And right away, we run into trouble. As he reminisces, Tom realizes that without friends or a lover, success isn’t worth a damn. But surely there are people for whom a slew of awards and bestsellers more than compensate for no longer hanging out with hometown friends? Besides, how many of the truly immortal ever had happy lives? Even Tom’s beloved Mark Twain battled bankruptcy while penning the books that would ensure his reputation.
Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom is that Love and Friendship make a person whole, so we’ll skip it. Conventional wisdom also has it that musicals require at least a handful of memorable songs, but you’d never know it from songwriter Neil Bartram’s contributions. Filling out his score with a slew of story songs, he manages to come across as the poor man’s version of composer William Finn, attempting a bromance version of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, another miniscule two-hander that examines the past to see how the characters reached their presents. But there isn’t a rhyme in Bartram’s score that comes as a surprise, even though the songs spill over with so many lyrics that one begins to wonder if Hill felt left out.
Chase, at least, lucked out with Wade Laboissonniere’s costume, a dark blue suit so well-cut that one gives the way it shifts on his muscular frame far more attention than one gives to the story. Gets, meanwhile, is done a major disservice with a beige suit that puddles around his white sneakers. A walking ad for oatmeal as part of a balanced breakfast, his costume manages to blanch out all of the quirkiness that has previously distinguished his work, both on Broadway (Amour) and television (Caroline in the City). His Alvin is all calculated eccentricities, from flapping his arms at 15 in imitation of a butterfly to a tedious decision to spend his whole life at home, with nary a vacation. Neither Hill nor Bartram make the case that this small town oddball has a story worth telling, though they certainly spin their wheels for 90 minutes.
Open run. The Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St. (between Broadway and 8th Ave.), 212-239-6200; times vary, $66.50–$100.
