Falsettos (2017)

Even though I don’t think the Tony performance for this revival necessarily put its best foot forward (the medley they did didn’t quite work out of context,) I was still excited to hear the production had been filmed and was coming to theaters.  In addition to just generally wanting to take advantage of being able to see Broadway shows without flying to New York, the cast was too good to pass up, and so when I saw that there was a showing at my local theater, I jumped at the chance to see it (premise spoilers.)

Technically two one-act musicals put together into a single show, Falsettos follows the complicated weavings of a family in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.  The father Marvin has come out, divorced his wife Trina, and taken up with his lover Whizzer.  He still wants to remain in the lives of Trina and his son Jason, however, setting up a rocky arrangement that becomes even rockier when Trina becomes romantically involved with Mendel, a psychiatrist who’s been working with Marvin, Trina, and Jason.  The familial minefield struggles to cope with insecurities, jealousy, arguments, and societal pressure.

William Finn is an interesting composer for me.  He wouldn’t make my top five – maybe not my top ten, either – but I always enjoy his work, which is by turns cerebral/neurotic and nakedly vulnerable.  I’d heard snippets of Falsettos’s score before, but this was my first exposure to the whole thing.  While Finn’s work isn’t always super-accessible the first time around, I liked it quite a bit overall.  The show is pretty much sung-through, so there’s a good mix of production numbers and scene-songs.  The score does a good job, I think, showing the fears beneath the surface of the characters’ posturing, yelling, and insistence.

As I said, the biggest draw for me here was the cast, and I wasn’t disappointed on that front.  At the center of the proceedings is Christian Borle (Tom from Smash) as Marvin.  He can be awful, petty and demanding, but he can also be desperately lonely and afraid, and he can come through for those he loves at unexpected moments.  He has good chemistry, alternately contentious and loving, with Whizzer, played by The Book of Mormon’s Andrew Rannells.  Rannells is the standout singer for me in a cast that doesn’t have any slouches – his Whizzer is a boytoy who wants to be recognized as more complicated than that, and his “The Games I Play” was probably my favorite number in the show.  Stephanie J. Block (former Elphaba!) is terrific as Trina, a woman who did everything “right” in terms of what her society tells her a wife should be and somehow still ended up with something far messier than she could have ever anticipated.  I have a soft spot for characters like these, and Trina is a great, nuanced example of this type.  Tracie Thoms (Joanne from the movie version of RENT) plays a smaller role in the second act as neighbor Charlotte, and the show is rounded out by Brandon Uranowitz as Mendel, Anthony Rosenthal as Jason, and Betsy Wolfe as other neighbor Cordelia.

Warnings

Language, sexual references, drinking, and thematic elements.