Opening last week at the Goodman, Life After proves musical theater can tell serious stories just as compellingly as straight drama. Musicals with sober or unconventional themes aren’t rare. This year’s Tonys saw two, Paradise Square and A Strange Loop vying for top awards. Musicals about death and grief however can qualify as unusual which makes engaging with them fascinating adventures.
Taking on grief as a musical’s centerpiece sounds like, and is, a big lift. Despite their inescapability, sadness and loss are things we learn early to avoid. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be approached and explored in ways that help us understand and embrace the complexities and price of real life.
Storytellers find their own special medium to spin their tales. Musicians enlist melodies and writers use language to create worlds we can both recognize and see ourselves experiencing. The child of pit musicians for musicals, Britta Johnson, Life After’s composer, lyricist and bookwriter, learned very early how songs could be used to add texture and meaning to a play. She also eventually discovered that the musicals she most appreciated were those that weren’t limited to a single dimension. The ones that used music and lyrics to add flesh to characters and substance to the central story became her ideal.
Johnson uses her deep musical background and her understanding of music’s adaptability to place us in the shoes of a 16- year-old who’s just lost her father suddenly and on the wrong note. Alice (Samantha Williams) and her dad Frank (Paul Nolan) had just had one of those flash disagreements that left each of them tense and resentful. Parents and their teens often have disputes when negotiating schedules or talking about what one expects of the other. This one was no different and ended in silent impasse.
Just hours before the impending calamity, we watch and listen to Frank leave a message on his daughter’s phone. He’s apologizing and assuring Alice that he loves her and ends his call with touching well wishes for her birthday.
As a well- established writer of self-help books, he’s on his way out of town to deliver a keynote talk at a conference. Because It’s her birthday, he wanted to spend some time with her before he left. Anticipating he’d already be on the road, Alice had made other plans for celebrating. Each asked the other to bend. One wouldn’t and the other couldn’t; leaving the stalemate coated in hurt on both sides. Through the words Frank left on her voicemail and Alice’s reaction to them, it’s clear their strong bond had not been broken by the spat. Later that night, at 8:22, on a difficult road with heavy snow falling, he was gone.
Alice, her sister Kate (Skyler Volpe) and her mother Beth (Bryonha Parham), all process their loss differently. Alice thinks her father might have been out looking for her when he had his accident and believes it’s her fault he’s died. Hers is the natural gut response and leaves her spinning in confusion and guilt. But her sister and mother don’t conform to stock reactions. After the shock, they both take refuge in pragmatism. The sense of loss and deep regret is there, but they’re better able to move forward. Older and in college, Kate isn’t always soft when she consoles her sister. She’s more resolute in her push to regain a semblance of balance. Pain must be endured, but the real world requires immediate attention and action. Kate’s relationship with her father wasn’t as close as Alice’s. Something she regrets, but accepts as one of life’s unfortunate puzzles.
Chiefly through flashbacks, we see and hear Frank often. A strong advocate for forgiveness and self-care it’s crucial we understand how his approach to living influenced the way his family responds to life without him. Neither life or death is simple. Exposing a likely marital transgression with Ms. Hopkins (Alana Chavez), Alice’s debate coach, we’re also shown how our faults and frailties can live on after we’re gone; forcing those who care about us to grapple with the full measure of who we were.
Two people, and occasionally a chorus with the operatic name of the furies, insure we notice how humor and fortitude can undergird death, just as it does in Life After. Lucy Panush as Alice’s best friend Hannah is quirky enough to say things that might make some people gasp. But she expresses herself so guilelessly and with enough innocence that her awkward and seemingly insensitive statements sound sweetly chaste. They even possess just enough humor to make you smile. She knows she’s not saying things in exactly the right way. She’s just doing the best she can to show up for a friend in a time of extreme need. It’s her effort that makes her so endearing.
Even though Bryonha Parham isn’t trying to steal the show as Alice’s mother, the magnetism she radiates when she’s on stage overrides her attempts to just play her part straight. As Beth, she’s so firmly rooted in her confidence of who she is and what she needs to do that she slices through the tragedy of her husband’s death with the resolve of the Queen Mary in heavy seas. It’s only through her standout solo near the end of Life After that the mask falls; revealing both pain and vulnerability. That single performance raised the integrity of an already impressive and admirable production. One that made the audience peer thoughtfully into parts of life we generally prefer to step gingerly around.
Standing in for Jen Sese as Ms. Hopkins, Alana Chavez proved the incalculable value of understudies. She blended so seamlessly into the stellar cast so well, you’d think she owned the role.
Life After
June 11 – July, 17, 2022
Goodman Theatre
170 N. Dearborn
Chicago, IL 60601
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