The emotional impact of plays about musicians tend to have a high floor and a low ceiling. Heartbreak Hotel, Hank Williams: Lost Highway, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Always . . . Patsy Cline—it’s a category of theater that’s by and large informative and unchallenging and, at best, an excuse for a solid live revue. These shows also usually feel like they’ve been pressed out of the same Mold-A-Rama with a different name and songbook.
“I just had a party and everyone is gone” is a common setup for solo shows, but it’s tricky. It’s no doubt a practical solution for how to organically introduce anecdotes about different characters, but its ultimate premise is the idea that the space was, moments ago, occupied by lots of vibrant people you would have loved to meet whom you’ll now be passively told about. This model could probably use some retooling.
From my seat in the back of Goodman’s Owen theater, I wondered how many people in the audience had firsthand knowledge of that despair, and how they could possibly stand to benefit from sitting and stewing in it for so long. Were the iTunes sample-length snippets of thematically parallel Billie Holiday songs illuminating or redemptive enough to justify going through that melancholy?
Through 11/18: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $15-$45.
