{"id":1006,"date":"2022-01-10T23:25:32","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T23:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2022-01-10T23:25:32","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T23:25:32","slug":"review-wild-a-musical-becoming-is-finding-its-footing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/review-wild-a-musical-becoming-is-finding-its-footing\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: \u2018Wild: A Musical Becoming\u2019 Is Finding Its Footing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Idina Menzel and a hummable pop score can\u2019t camouflage the fact that this musical is half-baked. Still, it can make for an enjoyable evening, our critic writes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. \u2014 In the 13 years that Diane Paulus has been artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, she has used it as a laboratory for developing new musicals and re-envisioning old ones, then ushering them to Broadway success. \u201cWaitress\u201d and \u201cJagged Little Pill\u201d had their premieres there; so did Paulus\u2019s staging of \u201cThe Gershwins\u2019 Porgy and Bess\u201d and her revival of \u201cPippin,\u201d which won her a Tony Award for directing.<\/p>\n

But at Thursday\u2019s opening night performance of \u201cWild: A Musical Becoming,\u201d a climate-change eco-fable starring the Tony winner Idina Menzel, Paulus began her preshow speech by ratcheting down the audience\u2019s expectations of this latest premiere.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusicals take years to develop,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the subject matter of this story tonight was so pressing that we felt we could not wait to share it with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actors would perform with scripts in hand, she added. Our imaginations would be required to fill in the blanks of what the A.R.T. is calling a concert production.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

All of which is fair enough. But the charismatic lead and hummable pop score of \u201cWild\u201d can\u2019t camouflage the fact that this musical is very much in the awkward phase of becoming whatever it ultimately might be.<\/p>\n

Still, it can make for an enjoyable evening, depending on your willingness to overlook the ungainly book by V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, and get over your disappointment in a show that includes Javier Mu\u00f1oz \u2014 a.k.a. Broadway\u2019s sexy Hamilton \u2014 but gives him far too little to do, and dresses him dowdily. Actually, you may have to get over the other actors\u2019 costumes, too.<\/p>\n

Directed by Paulus at the Loeb Drama Center, the story takes place in a town called Outskirtzia. Hard up for cash, the local farmers get an offer from corporate outsiders called the Extractacals: $50,000 apiece in exchange for drilling on their land.<\/p>\n

The community\u2019s adults are tempted; the teenagers are alarmed. That strife is the primary tension of a show that, for all its ecological advocacy, is also a parable about understanding between parents and children.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Menzel plays Bea, a farmer struggling with her mortgage who could use the windfall from the Extractacals. But her adolescent daughter, Sophia (the mononymous musician-actor Yde), is so terrified of the destruction of the planet and outraged by the adults\u2019 complicity in it that she falls into a catatonic state, then disappears into the forest and transforms into a sea horse.<\/p>\n

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It may or may not be a spoiler to say that other children in the town follow suit, each manifesting as a different kind of animal, each determined to save the earth from their parents\u2019 recklessness.<\/p>\n

With the grown-ups in danger of selling their souls, \u201cWild\u201d is partly a morality play, gesturing in the direction of Christopher Marlowe\u2019s \u201cDoctor Faustus\u201d \u2014 and also toward Brecht, Dr. Seuss and \u201cUrinetown.\u201d All of it in two dimensions.<\/p>\n

Which is unfortunate, because the cast is packed with talent. Menzel, a disarmingly sympathetic not-so-evil stepmother in Amazon\u2019s recent \u201cCinderella,\u201d brings an appealing ease and playfulness to Bea, and adds a touch of country music to the richness of her voice (Menzel\u2019s run in the show ends Dec. 23). And Yde opens a window to Sophia\u2019s soul with a couple of striking solos, \u201cDear Everything\u201d and \u201cHuman.\u201d<\/p>\n

With music principally by the pop songwriters Justin Tranter and Caroline Pennell, and lyrics principally by Tranter, Pennell and V, \u201cWild\u201d is a slickly produced work in progress. Rock-show lighting by the excellent Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew is remarkably effective in revving up the crowd during the more anthemic numbers.<\/p>\n

The cast of 10 is backed by a three-piece band (the music director is David Freeman Coleman) and members of the Boston Children\u2019s Chorus, who add vocal depth and, by their presence, enhance the sense of a generation demanding action.<\/p>\n

But the show comes across as more pageant than musical, with politics paramount. Too often, the text bonks us over the head with its messaging, as when Sophia\u2019s friend Forte (Paravi Das) explains that \u201call living things are now being seriously jeopardized by us humans \u2014 well, non-Indigenous humans, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

And does a debate over pronouns really need to erupt \u2014 around Possible (the very funny Luke Ferrari), a nonbinary teenager, and their unaccepting father, Mr. Custom (Mu\u00f1oz) \u2014 during the crisis over Sophia\u2019s disappearance? Might there be a more organic moment to make the same point?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n