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A New Brain, at Encores! Off-Center
by Julia Polonsky Bravo to all the artists involved in re-imagining and updating William Finn’s A New Brain for Encores! Off-Center. The endlessly talented James Lapine not only co-authored A New Brain, but directs this production, with gusto and brio and smashing style. Encores! Off Center productions, which are effectively staged readings on steroids, work their minimalist sets hard. In this case, scenic designer Donyale Werle makes the most of a piano, a gurney, a bench, and a bizarre MRI coffin. The choreography, by Josh Prince, does a great job of emphasizing the hallucinatory feeling of much of the show. William Finn does witty, clever patter songs better than anyone. A New Brain serves them up, one after another, making killingly funny art of a disastrous time in his life. The libretto – the show is sung-through, with small splashes of dialogue sprinkled here and there – tells the story of Gordon Michael Schwinn, (Jonathan Groff) a struggling songwriter with a nightmare job, writing for a kiddie show. He has to be upbeat. He has to rhyme. He hates it. He has a best friend (Alyse Alan Louis), a mother (Ana Gasteyer), a boyfriend (Aaron Lazar), and a nightmare boss -- an oversize frog named Mr. Bungee (Dan Fogler) who appears in hallucinations and dream sequences, berating, belittling, and threatening Gordo.
He also has an arteriovenous malformation in his brain (try rhyming that), and when he suddenly passes out in public, the rest of the show sings of hospitals, tests, MRI, surgery, recovery. A New Brainshows us love and abandonment, and family, and fear and how we cope with it (some of us go sailing; some of us send our lover home and get to work writing one last song, some of us put on rubber gloves and clean the apartment and throw out books). Above all, it shows how we change, when the Big Things happen.
Most of the songs are quite good. Perhaps it’s petty to cavil at them mostly sounding melodically similar, but they do. However, among the splendid highlights: a lovely song about songs, “Heart and Music.” The ensemble work on “Gordo’s Law of Genetics,” segueing into “And They’re Off.” A brace of songs for the “nice nurse” (Josh Lamon): “Poor, Unsuccessful, and Fat” and “You Boys Are Gonna Get Me In Such Trouble.” It may also be petty to kvetch about the pacing, but there it is. The show itself is written in long stretches of frantic, with slower moments that feel like lulls, instead of lovely opportunities for reflection. What works really, really well: the frame for the story arc. A homeless lady, (Rema Webb) asks for change. “Pennies, nickels, and dimes,” she sings, when we first meet her, and as the show goes deeper, her demand for change parallels Gordo’s experiences as he almost dies, then recovers. She’s Greek chorus, therapist, and revenge incarnate, all delivered in one showstoppingly excellent performance. Other memorable performances: Quentin Earl Darrington as The Minister, and Bradley Dean as Dr. Jafar Berensteiner, who gets one of the biggest laughs in the show. Kudos to Encores! Off-Center for bringing back A New Brain, a creative, boundary-pushing Off-Broadway musical about. Bringing back such musicals makes the theater scene in New York a more interesting, better place. A New Brain at Encores! Off-Center
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