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Past Reviews Off Broadway Reviews |
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Based on what's onstage in Lee Overtree's colorful, caffeinated, and scattered production, I would guess that what Found really wants to be is a celebration of the material on which it's based. Specifically, Davy Rothbart's Found Magazine and books, which over the past decade have compiled discarded lists, letters, and more into collections that not only capture snapshots of our lives, but (in theory, anyway) tell us where our priorities and values are as a society. Though geared heavily toward laughs, there's occasionally trenchant, even moving, insight to be located among the depicted trash. The musical is, perhaps predictably, at its best highlighting these things. From the windshield-posted rant that started it all (which ends a skin-flaying charge of cheating with the post-script "Page me later") to an absurd personal ad for a too-ideal girlfriend ("needs to look like a mix between Charlize Theron, Carmen Electra, and Susan Boyle...Please come in costume as one of the four Ninja Turtles") to the utterly inexplicable ("Did you fall in the sewer yesterday? Write bak") and beyond, it's a stunning (and bewildering) cross-section of contemporary humanity. (This is amplified by David Korins's charmingly cluttered bulletin board–scrapbook set, and Daniel Maloney's constantly working projections of the notes.) Unfortunately, Found is not merely a concert-collage of the findings. Overtree worked with Hunter Bell (best known as one of the writer-stars of [title of show]) to craft a libretto to tie all this together. But they've succeeded primarily in creating a book musical that wishes it weren't one.
Ultimately, however, what makes the show thud is exactly what should make it fly: the notes. They're dropped in by the dozens, sometimes reflecting on the action in the plot, and sometimes seemingly at random, but they interrupt the flow of the action far more than they lubricate it. That, in all but a few of the cases, they're also far funnier and more original than anything Bell and Overtree have written doesn't help, either. This is true, by the way, whether they're spoken (as the majority of them are) or sung. To his credit, composer-lyricist Eli Bolin has deftly musicalized a dozen or so of the pre-existing pieces, filtering a variety of pop styles from traditional ballad to hip-hop and more through a distinctly theatrical sensibility that works to bring entertaining order to most of the stream-of-consciousness ramblings. His best work is the most unexpected: "Pi Shop," a bizarre mathematical rap, or "Looking for Love," an isolated instance of pure earnestness. But he does tend to overdo it ("Cats Are Cats" and "Lord Patrick, King of the Ladies") are all about hyperextending one-joke to several minutes in duration. And most of the newly conceived stuff is either serviceable (the catchy, meaningless opener "Weird Day") or terrible (an endless, unbearable scene-song at the end of Act I that imagines an apparently infamous school production of Johnny Tremain). And the choreography for many of these numbers (by Monica Bill Barnes) is dance-club vital but distractingly busy. At least the bouncy orchestrations (Frank Galgano and Matt Castle) and musical direction (Castle) keep things sounding professional. With the exception of Weed (seen Off-Broadway earlier this year in Heathers), who's unable to find any spark in her rather joyless scold role, the cast is a kick. Blaemire effectively blends cool and nerdy to show us how naturally Davy floats outside of the mainstream; Everidge, so excellent in Falling and Fat Camp, kindles plenty of sparks of silliness as Mikey; and Morgan comes about as close as anyone could to energize the Scheming Girlfriend archetype. Standouts in the ensemble include a severe Andrew Call, a perky Orville Mendoza, and a sparkling, versatile Molly Pope. So good are these people, in fact, that you wish they had been given free rein to make something dazzlingly new, rather than been forced to make so much that's stale look fresh. If it's not going to be a revue—though it would undeniably work, and probably well, in that format—then it needs a dedication to its underlying emotional principles, not to be satisfied with being a pseudo jukebox musical of Rothbart's findings. Without such feelings, Found the musical plays as little more than a singing advertisement for Found the franchise.
Found
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