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But watching the excellent Encores! Off-Center production of A New Brain, which is playing at City Center through this weekend, reveals something far more complex, significant, and magical. Although the show, which Finn wrote with colibrettist James Lapine (who also directs), does explore what happens when a songwriter (named Gordon Schwinn, played here by Jonathan Groff) is felled by a mysterious malady that requires numerous tests and, eventually, a life-threatening craniotomy to correct a longstanding defect, it's far more concerned with the event's impact on the owner's heart—and those of the people who surround him. On a personal level, this group comprises his busybody mother Mimi (Ana Gasteyer), his boyfriend Roger (Aaron Lazar), and Rhoda (Alyse Alan Louis), the producer of the children's TV show for which Gordon writes. But there's also the hospital staff—two nurses, one nice (Josh Lamon) and one thin (Jenni Barber); the doctor (Bradley Dean); and the hospital's chaplain (Quentin Earl Darrington)—and the homeless woman who mills about outside (Rema Webb), and the TV show host, a "frog" named Mr. Bungee (Dan Fogler), who forever criticizes Gordon's work and taunts the very notion that he can (or should) be writing at all. The last is particularly crucial, as Mr. Bungee does not exist in a technical sense, at least for our purposes. He's the physical manifestation of Gordon's insecurities, which he conjures up to torture, excuse, and diminish himself in a way that no one else can. He's also the key that nothing can or should be taken at face value. So what are we to infer about Mimi, Roger, or any of the others? Do we ever actually meet them? And, more important, can we ever get to know them when our only confirmed experience of them is through Gordon's hyperactive filter?
Each musical number (there are more than 30, crammed into a scant 100 minutes of playing time) broadens or deepens your understanding of who Gordon is and how he perceives his existence. This is most evident in more abstract songs like "Gordo's Law of Genetics" (riffing off a family medical history survey, with Mimi insisting everything bad comes from her departed husband's side of the blood line), "Sitting Becalmed in the Lee of Cuttyhunk" (something of an MRI-encased fever dream), and "In the Middle of the Room," as Gordon ponders the oddity of being the chief bystander of his maddening ordeal. And, certainly, such numbers are jagged and unusual, staccato shots (occasionally of sedative, occasionally of adrenaline) that highlight Gordon's increasing disconnection. "Sailing" (the show's enormous break-out cabaret hit), however, is perhaps even more powerful in its context as Gordon's hazy imagining of Roger's maritime-focused psyche. He projects plenty of his own fears onto the nice nurse sponge-bathing him (leaving an open question who's really the subject of the song's title, "Poor, Unsuccessful and Fat"), and Mimi when she arrives to try to fix things as only a mom can ("Mother's Gonna Make Things Fine"). And Mr. Bungee slowly evolves from an agent of persecution into the encouraging force keeping Gordon aware. Little here is exactly what it seems to be, and through bouncing tunes and lilting lyrics ("Veins in the brains are like balloons / Filled with water / Sometimes they burst / If comes to worst / Which unfortunately yours did"), Finn makes that captivatingly clear. Though tangible reality is essentially a character, and makes its presence keenly felt at certain points (most notably the duet "Just Go," when Roger tries to stay the night against Gordon's expressed desires), its application represents the shakiest sections of the show's otherwise rock-solid concept. The homeless lady gets two songs ("Change" alone and "A Really Lousy Day in the Universe," a duet with Roger) that have too tenuous a connection to Gordon to fit easily; and though Mimi's "The Music Still Plays On," as she tries to cope with her son's near-death while facing off against his personal library, is an emotional high point, it's narratively useless, documenting specific action outside of any possible frame of Gordon's reference. So, no, A New Brain is not perfect. Still, such flaws hardly matter when the presentation and the casting are as elegant as they are here. Groff brings a beguiling, ironic air to Gordon that illuminates his limited vision of the world, but gives the actor plenty of room to expand to more sprawling vistas of emotion later. The tight and neurotic attitude he adopts early on, which melts into an agonized acceptance later, is just right for a wunderkind facing his own mortality earlier than he ever expected. And Lazar cuts a tall, strong, and stolid figure that's a clean, compelling contrast. Everyone here is good, though, with the intense Louis, the mirthfully menacing Fogler, and the hilarious Lamon meriting special mention for their acting, and Dean and Darrington particularly notable for their drier comic senses and superb singing. Perhaps the best blend of talents, though, comes from Gasteyer, who aces Mimi's frantic comedy and pierces through the score with her arresting, clarion belt voice, but likewise has no trouble pulling back far enough to let you see the precise, intimate boundaries of her feelings for Gordon. This is a woman who's long had to make it on her own, but secretly knows she could not have done it without help. That sounds more than a little like Gordon's lesson, no? Such parallels are rife throughout A New Brain, and are approached, as is everything else, with an artistry that is at once touching and objective, as much about what Gordon wants as what we need. That elevates the show and transports us to the realm of insight and wonder only accessible by way of the best musicals—the best theatre. Maybe brain surgery isn't inherently theatrical, but who can tell when its writers and presenters never for one moment behave as though it's anything but?
A New Brain
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