‘Stereophonic’ on the Pantages falls flat: Assessment

“Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s heralded drama that gained 5 Tony Awards together with finest play, is prepared for its Los Angeles close-up.

The primary nationwide tour manufacturing, which opened Wednesday on the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, appears proper at dwelling within the music capital of the world. The play a few Nineteen Seventies rock band getting ready to superstardom takes place in recording studios in Sausalito and L.A., the place the Laurel Canyon vibe is rarely out of sight.

The visible crispness of this L.A. premiere goes a great distance towards dispelling doubts that the Pantages is the flawed venue for this ensemble drama. If there’s an issue, it isn’t the cavernousness of the theater. The manufacturing, gleaming with interval particulars on a set by David Zinn that provides us clear views into each the sound and management rooms, comfortably inhabits the efficiency area, at the very least from the attitude of a good orchestra seat.

The play, which incorporates unique music from Will Butler, the Grammy-winning artist previously of Arcade Fireplace, has a sound each bit as strong as one of many blockbuster musicals that repeatedly passes via the Pantages. The songs, crushed by the actors at prime quantity, are Butler’s indie rock re-creation of cuts for a part-British, part-American band that bears such a putting resemblance to Fleetwood Mac {that a} lawsuit introduced by a former sound engineer and producer of the group was finally settled.

Adjmi, like Shakespeare, takes his inspiration the place he finds it. And just like the Bard, he makes his sources his personal, alchemizing the fabric for novel ends.

Unfolding in 1976 and 1977, “Stereophonic” provides a fly-on-the-wall perspective of a band at a crossroads. Whereas recording a brand new album top-heavy with expectations, the group falls prey to romantic conflicts and self-destructive spirals, to poisonous jealousies and seething insecurities. The prospect of fame magnifies pathologies which have been intensifying over time.

Diana (Claire DeJean) is the Stevie Nicks of the band. Lovely, achingly weak and awash in lyrical expertise, she is entangled in a relationship with Peter (Denver Milord), the Lindsey Buckingham of the group, who strives for musical perfection irrespective of the fee.

Their connection is as professionally enriching as it’s personally harmful. Diana’s ambition is matched by her self-doubt. She’s inclined to a Svengali but doesn’t need anybody to inform her learn how to write her songs.

Peter, angrily aggressive, can’t assist resenting the pure ease of Diana’s expertise, even because it’s her music from their first album that has put the band again within the highlight. His genius is ferociously exacting whereas hers appears to spring naturally from her soul.

Artistically they rely on one another, however the rigidity between them is unsustainable. And because the play makes clear, there’s no technique to preserve their private lives out of the studio.

DeJean and Milord are essentially the most fascinating performers within the ensemble. The opposite actors are strong however this touring manufacturing makes clear simply how integral the unique forged was to the success of the play.

Daniel Aukin’s manufacturing, which had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2023 earlier than shifting to Broadway the next yr, hasn’t misplaced its assured circulate. The storytelling is lucidly laid out. However the tantalizing peculiarities of the characters have been whittled down.

The British band members undergo the worst of it. Emilie Kouatchou’s Holly strikes the character away from the plain Christine McVie reference, however her position has develop into vaguer and fewer central. Cornelius McMoyler’s Simon, the drummer and weary supervisor, fills the invoice in each respect however gravitas, which should be in place if the character’s final confrontation with Peter is to have the required payoff.

Nobody might compete with Will Brill, who gained a Tony for his strung-out portrayal of Reg, a deranged harmless whose addictions and dysfunctions create farcical havoc for the band. Christopher Mowod can’t fairly endow this “unhappy man in a blanket,” as Simon dubs his bundled-up bandmate, with the identical stage of fey insanity that Brill was capable of entertainingly provide.

These casting variations wouldn’t be price noting if it weren’t for his or her affect on a play that distinguishes itself by its observational element. Every thing is just a bit extra apparent, together with the 2 American sound guys bearing the brunt of the inventive temperaments working riot within the studio.

Jack Barrett’s Grover, the sound engineer who lied about his background to get the job, sands off a few of the character’s tough edges in a extra straightforwardly interesting model of the character than Eli Gelb’s bracing portrayal in New York. Steven Lee Johnson’s Charlie, the dorky assistant sound engineer, is an amiable weirdo, although I missed the way in which Andrew R. Butler performed him nearly like an area alien in New York.

The play has been edited, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a little bit of an endurance take a look at. Artwork isn’t simple for the characters or for us. However the effort isn’t in useless.

Adjmi’s overlapping dialogue and gaping silences, orchestrated in a neo-Chekhovian model, renders the invisible inventive course of seen. By the tip of the play, the tumultuous human drama behind inventive brilliance emerges in poignant, transcendent glory.