“Falsettos”

William Finn (Music & Lyrics); William Finn & James Lapine (Book)

Facing us on the other wise dark, blank stage is one of the four corners of a large, light-gray cube consisting of many large, various shaped pieces fit tightly together like a puzzle.  From that incredibly fascinating Rubiks-like cube will emerge living rooms, doorways, beds, steps, and dozens of other aspects of David Rockwell’s scenic design – all symbolizing a tight-knit group of people we will get to know whose lives come apart and reassemble in various and changing segments, only from time to time to emerge once again as a whole.  In William Finn and James Lapine’s Falsettos – now playing on tour at SHN’s Golden Gate Theatre – life and love; family and friends; new lovers and ex-lovers; gay and straight, living and dying; happy, angry, and sad are all part of the complicated ups and downs, ins and outs of growing up, of being in relationship, and of finally feeling comfortable figuring out what it means to be human.

Falsettos is an all-musical journey through three years of the lives of Marvin, his ex-wife Trina, his ten-year-old son Jason, his much-younger lover Whizzer, and his psychiatrist Mendel.  Neighbors and friends, Dr. Charlotte and her life partner Cordelia, eventually round out the configuration, resulting in many oft-changing patterns of sometimes intersecting and sometimes non-intersecting relationships.  William Finn began exploring Marvin and his core family in the 1979 one-act musical In Trousers.  Two years later, James Lapine joined him as they penned March of the Falsettos, followed in 1990 with the third edition – in the bleak peak of the AIDS crisis – with Falsettoland.  In 1992, the latter two one-acts were joined into the present musical, Falsettos.  The SHN production is a touring version of the much-celebrated (and now much-seen on current, repeated PBS airings) of the Lincoln Center Theatre, 2016 revival.

A story that has much pain, conflict, regret, and inevitable sorrow threaded throughout also has loads of humor, lots of genuine caring, and uplifting expressions of love that cannot help but touch hearts of those watching.  In other words, the story is about life itself as most of us experience it in any of our own three-year segments. 

The other thread in this particular slice of these lives is being Jewish, a source of much of the humor and a key element of especially the plot in Act Two’s reenactment of Falsettoland.  In fact, the musical begins with an introduction of the kind of bickering we will see cropping up time and again as the four men (with Trina chiming in from the sidelines) sing “Four Jews in a Room Bitching,” all dressed as if they were part of the original Exodus and taking time to tell a part of that story as the Red Sea suddenly appears and splits before our eyes.  We also get a glimpse of the never too complicated but always clever choreography of Spencer Liff as the shepherd staffs of these ‘ancient Jews’ become canes for a variety of dance modes, moves, and styles.

As Marvin, Max von Essen steps forward to begin telling his story in “A Tight Knit Family” – a story about a man who is leaving his life for a gay lover but who will spend much of the next two hours still wanting that ex-wife to be above all loyal to him.  That same Marvin ends his opening number with a repeated, “I want it all.” 

As the central character, Marvin is a man that is in many ways hard to like very much.  He is often like a spoiled child, wanting to be the center of everyone’s love and attention while himself finding it difficult to reciprocate without making accusations, pouting off by himself in a corner, or erupting into a full-on shouting match with almost any one of the others around him.  Mr. von Essen captures well the approach/avoidance nature of Marvin’s struggles with everyone from his ex to his lover to even his son.  From a delivery standpoint, his is the weakest of sung vocals among this cast of outstanding singers; yet he rises time and again effectively to sell numbers that serve as milestones in his journey to come to grips with his decision to leave his wife Trina, with his struggles to be a good father to Jason, and his difficulty to love fully and unconditionally Whizzer.

The relationship between Marvin and Whizzer, as described in a combative duet entitled “Thrill of First Love,” is one of hot passion in bed and passionate arguing and fighting most of the time when not in bed.  Theirs is much like a dad/teenage-son pattern of ongoing bickering, with Marvin the provider and the demander and Whizzer the one who never can meet the high standards his lover has for him. 

Quickly, Nick Adams establishes his easy-going, less volatile Whizzer as amiable and a guy who knows himself pretty well, accepting his own faults more easily than Marvin does his own.  In “The Games I Play,” Whizzer bears his soul to us in a song where he admits, “It hurts not to love him, it hurts when love fades; it’s hard when part of him is off playing family charades.”  We want to root for Whizzer even when we are not sure at times if we do for Marvin.  As the second act progresses, however, Mr. Adams’ Whizzer becomes the person all are there to support, with his gut-wrenching “You Gotta Die Sometime” leaving a lasting, haunting impression as we cannot help but remember his repeated, sung whispers, “Sometime, sometime, sometime.”

Whizzer’s biggest fan is Jason, a boy who has difficulty relating to the father who left his mother but who finds in his father’s lover someone he can talk to and feel heard.  Young Thatcher Jacobs is superb as Jason (a role he shares with Jonah Mussolino), bringing big-sounding vocals and a giant personality to the small boy who goes from ten to thirteen in the course of the evening.  With a demeanor all-boy, he shrugs off with little-to-no reactions his parent’s worries and question; yet it often seems as if his Jason is the only adult in the room — especially in the heat of the planning of his bar mitzvah when in many ways the bar mitzvah seems to him as mostly for his parents. 

Each time Thatcher Jacobs’ Jason has a moment alone in the spotlight, he commands in ways thrilling with a voice that pierces the auditorium with electric energy.  At the same time and all the time, he is also just a boy’s boy who is trying his best to navigate through the drama of his parents’ lives and the mysterious, sudden sickness of his pal, Whizzer.

Unlike her son, Trina does not find Whizzer a person she wants to like, much less love – at least not until she begins to see him more through the eyes of her son.  Trina is in the beginning totally pissed about the cards she has been dealt by Marvin and seeks help from Marvin’s psychiatrist, Mendel.  Mendel uses his sessions with her to begin wooing her and uses his sessions with Marvin to question about his ex-wife’s love of wearing negligee and of her frequency of sleeping naked.  Nick Blaemire brings to his Mendel a mixture of something bordering on sleaze, a bundle of boyish mannerisms, and yet at times all-out charm that actually make him totally interesting and fun to watch as he progresses from outsider to full member of the family – the latter once he and Trina become much more than doctor/client.  He sings with a gusto and freshness of spirit and at times lets loose with exuberance that even sells Jason that his new step-dad is a fun guy to have around (as seen in their jumping, shaking, twisting “Everyone Hates His Parents”).

Even after finding a new husband, Trina – like Marvin – has trouble letting go of their past and her lingering mixture of feelings alternating between love and hate.  Eden Espinosa brings the same brilliant, beautiful powerhouse of a voice to the role of Trina that she had as Elphaba in her two past visits to San Francisco, touring here in 2005 and 2010 in Wicked.  Her Trina is a complicated conglomeration of feelings and reactions as a woman wracked with questions why did she once love and marry a man who turned out to be gay and a cheat, why she now feels inadequate to help her own son deal with feelings about his parents breaking up, and why she is suddenly in love with a man who should not have come on to her as her psychiatrist.  When she takes the spotlight for “Trina’s Song” and later for “Holding to the Ground,” we cannot help but be in hushed awe of the tremendous range of emotions she brings in both voice and facial expressions as she lays bear Trina’s admissions and confession, fears and doubts, hopes and dreams.

Rounding out the cast in the second act is the lesbian couple, with Bryonha Marie Parham as Dr. Charlotte and Audrey Cardwell as Cordelia.  Particularly impressive is Ms. Parham, whose rich, mighty voice shakes at the core with its foreboding “Something Bad Is Happening” as her Dr. Charlotte knows that there is a spreading disease “so bad that words have lost their meaning,” where “rumors fly and takes abound, stories echo underground.” Her compassion for her patient Whizzer, for his family and now her friends, as well as for her wanna-be, not-too-successful wife as a caterer is heard in her sung lines and seen in her solid persona, giving her Dr. Charlotte a position much bigger on the stage than the rather few appearances that she makes during the evening.

Book co-writer James Lapine also directs this touring cast and does so with many touches that make huge differences.  Just the directed decision to have characters often linger a sung note and let it waver in some emotion helps make the all-sung, no-spoken- dialogue book zing with extra power of meaning and effect.  As part of “Marvin at the Psychiatrist (A Three Part Mini-Opera),” his directing Mendel to use one hand with out-stretched fingers to implant his therapy in the directions of either Marvin’s or Trina’s head that then moves in a parallel trance to his slow-waving hand is a fabulous way to show the questionable therapist’s manipulation of the outcomes for the help each seeks from him.  The director’s orchestration of the constantly intricate movements and manipulations of the set’s many puzzle-like pieces by the cast of seven provides additional insights into the overlapping storyline’s complicated relationships.  His decision usually to have in Act One all cast on the set always watching and reacting (and sometimes interrupting) other scenes again re-emphasizes this same concept.

For anyone who is worried that a musical whose roots are thirty-five-plus years old is now out-of-date, a visit to SHN’s Golden Gate Theatre will soon destroy that fear.  William Finn and James Lapine’s Falsettosis perhaps more relevant and meaningful than ever in a world where once again threatening questions are being raised in this country and all across the globe of what defines a real “family” and who legitimately and legally gets to love whom.  What Falsettos literally sings clearly is that love is love is love if we just give ourselves time and permission to figure it all out.

Rating: 5 E

Falsettos continues through April 14, 2019 at SHN’s Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor Street, San Francisco.  Tickets are available at Tickets are available at https://www.shnsf.com.