If/Then, an original musical by the
Next to Normal writer/composer team of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, has a great deal going for it: a dynamite cast headed up by the bona-fide Broadway star Idina Menzel; a strong supporting cast featuring talents like LaChanze, Anthony Rapp, and Jerry Dixon; the
Rent and
Next to Normal director Michael Greif at the helm. The score, which bears some strong similarities to that for
Normal, reflects real growth by Kitt--whose bouncy, contemporary melodies are perfectly suited to Menzel's distinctive brass--and especially by Yorkey, whose lyrics for
Normal felt a titch too obvious a titch too often, and whose lyrics here are, for the most part, sharper, savvier, and more organic. And the musical's "road not taken" concept is, if not entirely original (Robert Frost, Frank Capra, and Gwyneth Paltrow got to it before Yorkey and Kitt did), certainly fresher and more challenging than, say, taking a classic movie about a boxer who slurps raw eggs and punches meat and plunking it onto the stage.
If/Then has a lot of imagination and a lot of talent behind it. It thus pains me to say that I found it to be an overcooked, ponderous, frustrating musical.
If/Then has two simultaneous plot-lines, both of which feature the same characters doing slightly different things, so it's easy enough to lose track of what's going on sometimes, especially in the long, overstuffed second act. The gist: A brilliant urban planner named Elizabeth, pushing 40 and recently divorced, returns to New York City after a decade of unhappy marriage in Phoenix. During the musical's first scene, Elizabeth goes to Central Park to meet up with two of her old friends, who do not know one another: Kate (LaChanze) is a kindergarten teacher; Lucas (Anthony Rapp) is a community organizer and activist. When they meet and the introductions are made, Kate announces that Elizabeth should start referring to herself as "Liz" in celebration of her new life, and then suggests that they spend the rest of the afternoon in the park. Lucas, on the other hand, calls Elizabeth "Beth,"which is how he knew her back when they were in college together. He suggests that they leave the park and attend a fair housing rally in Brooklyn.
The rest of the show follows Liz, who remains in the park with Kate and meets a man who becomes her husband, and Beth, who leaves the park with Lucas, runs into another college friend who gives her a job in the city planner's office, and becomes a respected career woman. While the two paths Elizabeth takes have significant overlaps, there are divergent outcomes: Liz and Beth both get pregnant, but by different men, to different ends and with different consequences. Liz and Beth both make compromises--the former chooses work over family, the latter marries and has kids, and demeans herself professionally by taking what we all know is a fate worse than death: an academic job. I like to think that in New York City in 2014, a woman like Elizabeth could have a successful, satisfying career
and a fulfilling family life, but I guess if this were the case, there'd be no point to
If/Then at all.
