New York City has never looked cleaner than it does in \u201cIf\/Then,\u201d the gleaming drawing board of a musical that opened on Sunday night at the Richard Rodgers Theater, starring the shiny-voiced Idina Menzel.<\/p>\n
Actually, to find any urban environment that is this spick and span, you\u2019d need to look back to the 1970s, when Mary Tyler Moore conquered Minneapolis on television. The nearest contemporary equivalents are those commercials in which peppy young things go dancing in the streets to trumpet the virtues of cars and colas.<\/p>\n
But even they \u2014 and \u201cIf\/Then\u201d does bear a passing resemblance to such ads \u2014 lack the antiseptic sheen of this production, written by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, with direction by Michael Greif, the team that gave us the four-handkerchief triumph \u201cNext to Normal\u201d several years ago. Every surface here appears to have been so thoroughly polished that you could not just eat off the sidewalks but see your own reflection in them, if you so chose.<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s protagonist, Elizabeth (Ms. Menzel), a conflicted city planner, so chooses. Manhattan is her mirror, a place to regard herself, not only as she is but also as she could have, would have and possibly should have been. It feels right that Mark Wendland\u2019s set includes a mirrored ceiling to reflect and multiply the actions onstage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf\/Then,\u201d you see, is a portrait of alternative existences, of roads taken or not, of the person a person might have been if she had only done this instead of that. If that sounds confusing, don\u2019t worry. You may occasionally have trouble keeping the show\u2019s twin story lines separate. But you\u2019ll never be in any doubt whatsoever as to what the central theme is.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because Mr. Kitt (music) and Mr. Yorkey (book and lyrics) never let us forget. Until the show\u2019s last quarter, when some shadows darken the bright emotional landscape, all the songs are pretty much interchangeable. Whether performed as solos or ensemble pieces, these numbers tend to percolate along, blithely and wonderingly, at the speed of circular thought. They also put to work every metaphor you\u2019ve heard about the elements of fate, chance and choice that govern our lives.<\/p>\n
Allow me to quote a few titles: \u201cWhat If?,\u201d \u201cYou Never Know,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a Sign,\u201d \u201cSurprise,\u201d \u201cSome Other Me\u201d and \u201cWhat Would You Do?\u201d The lyrics of such songs are about what you\u2019d expect, as in, \u201cYou lose all the choices you don\u2019t get to make\/You wonder about all the turns you don\u2019t take.\u201d<\/p>\n
I chose that quote at random (unless you don\u2019t believe in randomness, or choice, a subject of some debate in \u201cIf\/Then\u201d). Such words are largely set to folk-inflected pop melodies that have the insistent, mildly agreeable patter of a gentle spring rain. (The appealingly light-footed, urban-flux choreography is by Larry Keigwin.)<\/p>\n
The homogeneity of the numbers creates the effect of a sort of songwriting tutorial by rote. At intermission, I found myself continuing in the vein of Mr. Kitt and Mr. Yorkey, chanting little ditties of my own like, \u201cI\u2019m driving on the Thruway, take the ramp that\u2019s on the left, I wind up in Elmira….\u201d<\/p>\n
But I digress. (See what you made me do, \u201cIf\/Then\u201d?) Back to the plot(s): Elizabeth, hitherto a college professor of urban design, is newly divorced and newly arrived in Manhattan from Phoenix, with dreams of an exciting new career. Or an exciting new romance. \u201cIf\/Then\u201d wonders, none too originally, if it is possible to have both.<\/p>\n
So Elizabeth splits into two people, Liz (who wears eyeglasses) and Beth (who doesn\u2019t), who pursue separate paths from the same starting point, Madison Square Park, on the same day. It\u2019s there that Beth takes a call on her cellphone from a now-powerful school chum (Jerry Dixon) that leads her to a meteoric rise in city politics. Liz ignores the call and has a chance encounter (or is it?) with Josh (James Snyder), a handsome doctor in Army fatigues, who has just completed a tour of duty.<\/p>\n
Another point of the show is that every individual life is contingent upon the shifting existences of others. This means that Elizabeth\u2019s choices affect the futures of her close friends Lucas (a low-key Anthony Rapp), an idealistic community activist of ambivalent sexuality, and Kate (an utterly charming LaChanze), a contentedly lesbian kindergarten teacher. (The equally cute Jason Tam and Jenn Colella play the significant others in their lives.)<\/p>\n
The premise of \u201cIf\/Then\u201d recalls \u201cSliding Doors,\u201d the 1998 movie in which Gwyneth Paltrow led parallel lives with different hair colors. But its conceptual novelty factor aside, \u201cIf\/Then\u201d more exactly resembles a Lifetime movie \u2014 or two Lifetime movies spliced together \u2014 the kind in which prominent television actresses, in between crime shows, portray women whose lives are forever altered.<\/p>\n
Taken separately, neither plot of \u201cIf\/Then\u201d is terribly compelling or distinctively drawn. Taken together, they feel less like variations on a theme than dogged reiterations of a theme.<\/p>\n
Yet I suspect this show, which has been doing solid business in previews, will have no trouble finding an audience. Ms. Menzel, who brings an anxious intensity to a featherweight part, has an enviable fan base among young female audiences. She won fame (and a Tony) by originating the part of Elphaba in the long-running musical \u201cWicked.\u201d (Her celebrity quotient has been raised by the use of her voice in the hit animated film \u201cFrozen\u201d and her performance this year at the Academy Awards, when John Travolta\u2019s mispronunciation of her name went viral.)<\/p>\n
In \u201cWicked,\u201d a tale of two witches that riffs on \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d Ms. Menzel played Elphaba, a green-skinned outcast who discovered her inner power \u2014 and the highest human decibel level Broadway had known since Merman. Though in \u201cIf\/Then\u201d she keeps tight reins on the volume until a smashing climactic lament in the second act, young theatergoers who identified with her Elphaba will probably identify with her Elizabeth, too, now that they\u2019re a bit older.<\/p>\n
Like Elphaba, Elizabeth is prickly, smart-mouthed, loyal and neurotic. Despite her doubts, she gets what she wants, even if she doesn\u2019t know what that is. She also gets a whole, bustling city as her private introspective playground. In this rendering, that\u2019s a place so improbably uncluttered and streamlined that a gal can use it as a blank slate, or perhaps Filofax page, to map out her existential choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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