Be More Chill leaves me cold

Be More Chill Musical

Broadway’s Be More Chill is the latest stab at the Great White Way’s struggle for theatre to be a relevant 2500-year-old art form. Commissioned in 2015 by the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, Be More Chill went on to workshop in 2016 with a concert performance at Feinstein’s 54 Below and then to Off-Broadway at Signature Theatre in 2018. The show that landed at the Lyceum for the current Broadway season owes its life, primarily, to the 25 and under set who clicked, liked and shared online videos from the show and made its sold-out performances a foregone conclusion through their incredible cyberspace fandom. And so, a new world is born.

This is a new world where an audience can decide, beforehand, what it wants to see and how it will respond and whether or not a show will be a success based on popularity and cyber reach. It’s a world where the union rules and copyright laws that are continuously announced before every show, telling us we are not to record any part of what we will experience, will have to bend heavily or be abolished altogether if a musical wants to sell tickets. We now live in a world where shows are cast from reality TV, Instagram follower numbers and online clips for clicks as the audience decides what the theatre is and what it will be. ;Of what is past, or passing, or to come.; That’s Yeats … whom none of ‘them’ have read.

At the Sunday Matinee I attended, each cast member in the show was met with enthusiastic applause, whoops and shouts of joy at each of their initial entrances. Truthfully,  I have heard and even participated in entrance applause myself for stars of shows whose work I long admired, but this was different — it was more Rockstar. Initially, I was perplexed and then I felt a wave of prescience about the whole thing. I thought, ‘So here’s the future, the way it HAS to be if the theatre is to evolve and reach our media-saturated youth, and so be it. Sit back and see what the future holds, you old fogey.’

Be More Chill is an apple picked from Eden’s tree of Young Adult Novels. The source material is by the late Ned Vizzini whose struggles with an anxiety/depression disorder caused him to take his own life in 2013. His popularity, established before his untimely death, meant that other entertainment media would come knocking to adapt his work. His book ‘It’s Kind of A Funny Story’ served as the basis for the 2010 Emma Roberts/Zach Galifianakis film of the same name. It follows that the theatre would attempt to profit through association and adaptation, and here, it does. The show was a hit Off-Broadway and it’s a hit this season with healthy sales that should carry it for as long as the apple stays shiny.

Be More Chill Musical

The Story… hmmm … The story was… It’s about, you know… it’s about like 2 hours and 20 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission.

Seriously though, as the show opens, we find hapless nerd, Jeremy Heere struggling to ‘More Than Survive’ in the shark-infested waters of your average New Jersey High School. His only friend, Michael Mell (played by the gifted audience favorite George Salazar) is as hapless and nerdy as his BFF. Together they bolster each other’s spirits and try to hang together in the face of bullying and general social ostracism. Jeremy’s chief tormentor, Rich Goranski (played by Broadway veteran Gerard Canonico who has been turning out fine work since his Gavroche days in Les Miz) finally succumbs to some sort of fit, after which he makes nice with Jeremy, telling him that he himself went from Nerd Land to popular nerd nemesis overnight by taking a pill called The Squip. Goranski tells Jeremy where he can get the hook up on The Squip (at the local mall … where else) and promises to be his pal if Jeremy joins him on the brain enhanced Nano-tech superhighway.

Against Michael’s objections, Jeremy opts to take the pill he bought off the weird guy at the shoe store and the roller coaster begins. As The Squip takes hold in Jeremy’s brain it manifests itself as a Keanu Reeves knock off with a Ninja Turtle voice in the body of the wonderful Jason Tamm, another Gavroche/Les Miz veteran who has grown up on our stages. The Squip promises to raise Jeremy’s street cred and help him get the girl he desires, the chirpy, theatre obsessed Christine Canigula, played with hyperactive exuberance by Stephanie Hsu. The ups and downs of having a Nano-computer in your brain telling you what to do vs whether or not you can remain your true self are the plot points we must meander through between loud rock music numbers where the orchestra overbalances the over-amplified voices obscuring most of my understanding of Joe Iconis’ lyrics. What I picked up of the words and music in Be More Chill I wanted to put back down immediately even though I have greatly enjoyed Mr. Iconis’ prior work. The songs are repetitive and blend together like wood chips in your mom’s Vitamix™. Here or there, in less abrasive moments, the fine voices of the cast win out and there are tuneful and heartfelt bits of story moving forward.

The talented cast seems to revel in their roles and are never caught winking at us or portraying their characters with anything less than real, connected pathos. Jason Tam’s Squipp, as written, does not allow him to be more than the device he has to portray, but he works it for all it’s worth and his final moments in the show bring all the right feels from the audience. As the story’s protagonist Jeremy, Will Roland has a wonderful voice that seems indestructible given the demands he places on it. Couple that with a kind of Dear Evan Hansen charm, unsurprising since he is a veteran of the more superlative High School angst outing, and his is a fine performance within the two dimensions Joe Tracz’s book affords him. If there were ever a show that begged for the new Broadway normal of 90 minutes/no intermission, this is the one. I don’t mind seeing musicals that are over 2 hours long, indeed I’ve come to expect it, but at Be More Chill it’s that last 30 minutes that takes forFREAKINGever.

Did I hate Be More Chill? No, and I certainly appreciate anything that gets actors off the street and on a stage. Did I Like it? No. But (and this is a big but) if you’re younger than me (and many are) and hipper than me (and many certainly are) then get yourself a discount ticket and give it a whirl.

Be More Chill, now at the Lyceum Theatre, runs about 2 hours and 20 minutes with one intermission. Recommended for 12+. Children under the age of 4 are not permitted in the theatre.

Be More Chill Musical

 
Playing at Lyceum Theatre • 149 W 45th Street, NY 10036