Once
Enda Walsh (Book); Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglov (Music & Lyrics)
(Based on the Movie by John Carney)
Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory
For over fifty-five years of its eighty-three-year history, Hillbarn Theatre has performed in its highly versatile and intimate black box setting, transforming its close-at-hand audiences to locations wonderful, wild, and whimsical. As we the audience enter the theater during the company’s current opening, eleven patrons of an Irish pub are playing everything from various-sized guitars, cello, and violins to accordion, hand-drum, and tambourine while singing in the brogue and style of the Emerald Isle. Unable to avoid tapping our own feet and rhythmically nodding along, we are tempted as entering to step into the Irish pub to join in the foray of singing, foot-stomping, and swaying/swinging bodies.
But we have only seen and heard a sample of the richly evocative, soul-searching, emotionally charged music that Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglov have written for their 2012, eight-Tony-Award-winning musical, Once. Even more, we have not yet become immersed in a story by Enda Walsh (based on the 2007 movie by John Carney) that overflows with life-driving, life-changing passions for music, for love lost and found, and for a sense of self-fulfillment. Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory once again proves its well-deserved reputation as a masterful producer of first-rate, crowd-pleasing, and long-to-be-remembered musicals with a Once that immediately grabs the heartstrings of us as an audience and does not let us go until the final chord fades of the evening’s beautifully haunting songs.
For the rest of my review, please continue to Talkin’Broadway.
Rating: 5 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
Once continues its two-hour, thirty-minute (one intermission) production through April 7, 2024, by Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory, 1285 East Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City, CA. Tickets are available online at www.hillbarntheatre.org or by contacting directly the box office by emailing boxoffice@hillbarn.org or by calling 650-349-6411.
Photo Credits: Tracy Martin
