October 5th, 2024
{Fair warning, I'm going to do a little bit of tearing the score/lyrics to shreds here. I respect Ingrid Michaelson, she seems like she's probably a lovely person, a lot of people adore her work, she's said some very thoughtful and personal things about composing this show in her interviews, and it's great to see ANYONE'S dream realized on Broadway, even if I, Nora Grace Landy, do not personally like it. Okay. Ahem:}
Have You Ever Been to a Musical Where Every Time a New Song Started, You Wanted to Take Off Your Glasses and Rub the Sides of Your Nose like an Exasperated Father?
"Time, time time time.
It never was mine, mine mine mine.
But you know what is?
Love...
Hope...
Breath...
And dreams."
- The absolutely farcical punchline of a refrain from the opening number, aptly
named Time.
No, like, for real. It's a caricature. I couldn't have written a better
"shit a teenage slam poet would write" joke if I tried.
...Like, when I had to stifle that chortle less than 30 seconds into the show, I knew it
was gonna be a long night. , Ingrid Michaelson
So! The Notebook. The Nicholas Sparks novel/film sensation, now LIVE on the Great White Way!
Do not mistake me, I am not making fun of the cheesy romance genre. I would've loved an evening of truly indulgent, off-the-charts cheese. I adore cliché romances, and they deserve their place on the stage; I'm just not sure the creators of this show agree, given the way the whole thing apologizes for itself. Even immediately after the line I just recounted for you, the character singing (Older Noah) follows up with:
"—as cliché as that seems."
Like...hey, look! We're self-aware! Oh god, isn't this embarrassing? The Notebook the Musical? If we comment on how cliché the whole thing is, will you promise not to call us cringe?
If an alien, from a race with no concept of emotion or what it's like to experience feelings, sat down one day— and a human explained to that alien what falling in love is like— and then if that alien tried to write a musical about enduring love... well, I think it would sound exactly like The Notebook The Musical.
It's a ghost of a musical, with nothing to say. Every line is vague and broad, not committing to any specific viewpoint; it feels like someone ran every love song ever through a bot and then asked it to write the most generic romance possible. It tiptoes around itself. Much like Noah haunts his own house waiting for Allie, the actors haunt the stage; they perform a skeleton of a show with no meat to speak of— and, to divert for a moment, they really do perform it with all their might! I've never seen so many actors able to give the performances of their LIVES via such lazy text— however, in a phrase: the show is badly written. Horribly, even.
The Difference Between Sounding Merely Cliché and Sounding Trite is Care
Here's an example of what I mean:
"Where have you gone?
Just out for a walk?
And when you get back
we'll have us a talk
about life, about war,
about dinner, and more,
'bout the Sun and the Moon.
And where have you gone?"
- Leave the Light on, Ingrid Michaelson
Like...what are you talking about? What a nothing phrase! It sounds like those people who always say "I hate small talk. Let's talk about life, about war, about dinner, and more," and then never get more specific than that. Also, I get suspension of disbelief and everything, and I understand how hard it is to write lyrics, but I just really have a hard time believing Noah Calhoun would say the phrase, "we'll have us a talk."
This baby plays like an improv musical. If you’ve never had the distinct pleasure of attending a musical improv show, the format goes something like this: there is a cast, and probably a pianist. A phrase/location/prompt is taken from the audience. As the cast composes songs (over the musical stylings of the pianist) based on the prompt in real time, the verses tend to be just straight-up sentences with winding tunes— but to retain structure and form, the ensemble has to pick up on choice phrases and repeat them in tandem to create "choruses" for each song. Often, the cast members are talented enough to throw in harmonies from time to time. Very impressive for a group of people making up nonsense on the spot! Not how you want a Broadway musical (with a successful workshop and a Chicago run under its belt) to sound. The lyrics in this show make a mockery of the use of repetition. Every single song is just, like...an intro, then a cheap low-hanging-fruit chorus, then that same chorus fifty more times with no variance, no momentum, and nothing to keep you on your toes. I do not pretend to know better than an acclaimed singer/songwriter, but to my ears, it sounded like Michaelson wrote a stream-of-consciousness first draft and then called it good.
Shrek?
The day after I saw this show, I happened to be showing a friend of mine the pro-shot recording of Shrek the Musical on Broadway. In case you weren't aware, Shrek the Musical is fucking fantastic; I see it with new eyes every time, and on this go-around, thinking of The Notebook, I just got pissed off in the name of Musical Theatre songwriting. I don't intend to directly compare these artists' work, every creation has its own individual life, and the only thing these two shows have in common is that they're both stage adaptations of existing IP, but I just wanted to provide an example of truly specific and charming lyrics from the opening of Shrek:
"I prefer a life like this,
it's not that complicated-
sure, I'm fated to be lonely,
and I'm destined to be hated,
if you read the books, they say
it's why I was created,
but I don't care!
'cause being liked
is grossly overrated!"
- Overture/Big Bright Beautiful World, Jeanine Tesori/David Lindsay-Abaire
So clever! So precise! Even the wordplay with the use of "grossly..." (Shrek is famously gross, if any of you dear readers happen to live under a rock), and I could've picked nearly any lyric from that show for this little exercise.
Credit where credit is due, there was one lyric in the show that stuck out to me. It was succinct and specific in a way nothing else in the show was ever able to grab hold of. At the beginning of the song (also aptly named) Iron in the Fridge, Older Noah sings: "She left the iron in the fridge.
It was the second time that week.
I knew that she was getting worse,
and the doctors
agreed."
Maybe not super flowery or poetic, but it's straight to the heart. Well composed, in my opinion. Obviously you can't hear the music here, but the way the rhythm flows on that second line, after "and the doctors—" gives a half-a-breath-long moment where it seems like maybe he could continue with "—said that everything was going to be alright and we would live happily ever after and I was just being silly!" But then it just hits you with "—agreed." Knife to the gut. Great work.
The music itself in The Notebook is unmemorable and unremarkable. I was telling my friend as we left that I couldn't sing a single line from the show back to him (besides "My Days," but only the part from the same social media clip I'd already seen hundreds of times). The orchestrations were pleasant, but the base material was just nothing to write home about (that's funny, you see, because there's a whole lot of writing home in the show. Laugh).
I will say, the sound design was some of the best I've heard in a while. So many shows I've been to lately have been just deafening, and STILL impossible to hear the words from anyone's mouths. I understood every word at The Notebook, and didn't need to break out my earplugs a single time. There were a couple wonky spots with some mic feedback, but live theatre is live theatre and that's unavoidable sometimes.
I'm not going to talk about it anywhere else so I'm just going to put it here: the set did very little for me, it did not intrude but did not assist; if anything, it just reminded me of an old-timey courthouse (if you know nothing about The Notebook and you're wondering what reason it has to look like a courthouse, the answer is that it doesn't).
The direction was very Michael Greif-y. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess. Nothing offensive, just the same fast-walking and turning on a dime that we're used to. The water was cool.
Elaboration on Songs I Hated
As I mentioned already, I hated the opening. It was a snoozer. It truly set the stage for the many (many) songs to come (Leave the Light on, I Wanna Go Back, We Have to Try, and I Love You More, to name a few) which would feature a whole lot of pointless counterpoint and even more moseying aimlessly about the stage for decades.
I hated the diegetic song during which Allie and Noah meet for the first time: Dance With Me. Mostly, I just found it annoying. Plus, the pacing and phrasing of the spoken lines in the song are just painfully trite. They also take a weirdly long time to focus on the fact that Noah plays the guitar/sings, and then never bring it up again. Not everything has to be totally critical to the greater plot, but like, they gave a whole backstory for it. Why? Just to keep the song in? Why did it have to be a song in the first place? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Guys, even as I'm writing this, I'm having to pull up the album and play every single song just to remember what they sound like. That's how unmemorable they are. I've now listened to this album probably...six times? ish? I was trying to listen closer to take notes, but I had to stop because it was becoming a form of self-harm. I was sitting on the train, involuntary expression of disdain plastered across my face, the whole way to work.
Anyway.
I HATED I Paint. There's this moment of ridiculous forced conflict between the youngest versions of the lovers, where Allie goes to give Noah a painting she made but tries to take it back because she's mad at him. Noah says, in complete lovestruck earnest, something along the lines of "you painted this?" Allie then goes on this whole unprompted manic-pixie-dream-girl-style-fuck-you-rant (the song) where she's basically going "yeah, maybe I like to pretend the world is different than it is because the real world is cruel, yeah, maybe I'm different, and easy to fall in love with, and have a rich inner world, but I can't tell that you're thinking that right now because I'm just SO WRAPPED UP in angrily telling you about this thing I had never even mentioned before. I can't even tell that you're staring lovingly at me as I behave uncouthly toward you, not to mention that you don't even care that I'm acting like this for no reason because you love how passionate I am, SO, YEAH. I PAINT."
and THEN. Oh ho ho ho ho. There's a big ol' pregnant pause.
And THEN. Noah looks upon the painting, which from where I was sitting (lottery ticket mezzanine) looked like a nonspecific half-blue-half-yellow thing, okay? Noah looks at this half-blue-half-yellow painting, and does this starry-eyed "ohhhh, I understand. You're so complicated*, but I see you. The painting is sadness, but it's also joy." The song is called Sadness and Joy, by the way. Oh my GOD, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. JUST WAIT, THOUGH.
Because THEN! There's another big ol' pregnant pause.
And THEN. Allie is like..."I never knew anyone in the universe could see things the way I do. :')" BECAUSE HE SAW SADNESS AND JOY IN YOUR BLUE AND YELLOW PAINTING? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?
The part of me that wants to give them the benefit of the doubt is going "maybe it's like that on purpose, because they're illustrating how young love is so pure, and how when you're truly in love everything your partner does seems remarkable to you," etc., etc., but unfortunately I can smell intention and I can smell irony, and baby, it's just not there.
I didn't care for I Wanna Go Back. I've already told you the gist of what annoys me about these songs overall, so you can fill the aforementioned in here too; but I Wanna Go Back is a little different. The song is this reflection of all the Allies on the past, and Alzheimer's, and memory. The lyrics go as follows: "I,
I am still in here.
I'm waiting for you
to come let me out, dear.
Is it time for dinner?
Is it time for forever?"
Lots of things for me to pick at! First off, what the fuck is "Is it time for dinner? Is it time for forever?" I feel like I see what she was going for, like "is it time for dinner" being a commonly asked question by confused Alzheimer's patients, and also dinner being a (poorly executed but I'll get to that later) thread between all the Allies and Noahs, but where the hell did "is it time for forever" come from? Is "forever" death? Is it...something else? Yeah, yeah, not everything has to be literal, but...those two lines in that order feel so nonsensical, and ridiculous, and misplaced, that I'm truly asking myself if I missed something. Actually, I'm asking you. Did I miss something?
I also did not enjoy a certain concept that they hammer home throughout the entire show: this idea that Allie will "come back" to Noah if he just keeps reading her the book and reminding her of their life together. I feel like they were trying to add a magical element to the tragedy, but it just comes off as uninformed, or worse: blatantly ignorant. The nurse character even says something about Alzheimer's only going one way, that you can't make people "come back," but later she's proved wrong (spoiler, Allie "comes back"), and love prevails over ALZHEIMER'S. I guess. I haven't seen the movie in a long time, but I feel like I don't remember it being portrayed as Noah "bringing Allie back" when she does gain her memory for a moment at the end. It just reads as one of the good moments that Alzheimer's patients can have between the hard ones, and it's more touching because of how real it is. I don't know. Not to be preachy, but I think it's important for people to know how this disease really tends to go before they may have to deal with it later in life—imagine someone you love getting diagnosed with Alzheimer's and THEN you have to shed this long-held belief that the person you knew is "still in there." Or, worse, you don't learn any better and you behave in a way that scares your loved one and hurts you more. In any case, I think it does the love story injustice.
If This is Love, Jordan Tyson (Younger Allie)’s most notable solo, is another unfortunate nothing song. She sounds impeccable on it! And she really connects, despite the fact that there are no stakes and she’s just saying the same thing over and over again. Testament to all the work Tyson has clearly done.
The sex song, Kiss Me, was a big fat miss for me personally. And I know I tend to have really strong feelings about sex in media, but this has nothing to do with that— in that regard, I actually think the scene was done rather well. It didn’t feel pointless, or horned up solely for the viewer’s pleasure, which are two issues I usually have. No, my qualms lie once again with the lyrics. First off, the sex idea comes out of nowhere— Allie just decides all of a sudden to start taking her clothes off? This is at a point when they’ve met in “their” house after a big blowout fight with Allie’s parents. It comes off as Allie just trying to get back at her parents by sleeping with the boy they don’t like, which may be part of it, but I really don’t think is the big message that was intended to convey. The song consists of each of them being like “wow! I’m not wearing clothes but my partner isn’t even looking at any of my insecurities :)” It sort of annoyed me because, like, this should be a huge moment as far as their dedication to their love for each other, and he’s singing about his stomach? If overcoming insecurity were an important theme in the show I would get it, but it’s not. There’s no reason for them to suddenly focus on it like that.
One little thing about My Days (although it's far from a perfect song and I think most of us would agree that the performance of the actor is really what makes it special), just one littttttleee thing I would've loved to have seen: as it is now, she starts the song already knowing that she "[has] to run away." It would've been so easy to change, and so beneficial as far as Allie's journey in the song, to have the lyrics start out more unsure and grow into the moment where she finally has to choose. Perhaps, "I can't run away," or, "I'm scared to run away," etc. etc. Maybe these well-known, well-loved songwriters should start checking with 24-year-old nobody bloggers before they open their dream Broadway shows. Actually, scratch that. If someone I loved came to me with this show, told me they were writing it, and asked me for notes, I'd be forced to be like, you do not want to hear what I have to say. We are clearly so fundamentally different as artists that nothing I can tell you will be of any benefit to you.
Truly, I could continue to go on, but I don't think it's in any of our best interest. Rest assured, the style of lyricism in this show was not my taste.
The (Note)Book
Overall, I thought the book was fine. Perhaps a bit juvenile, but there's nothing explicitly wrong with that! There's just a decent amount of spoon-fed exposition (a-la "Mom and Dad are dead, remember?"), but for things that either we've already seen happen or that would've hit harder had there not been so much handholding. During the portion of the show where Noah and Allie are apart, there's so much missed opportunity to give Noah more depth— he's clearly tortured by the fact that almost everyone he loves has left him, but all we get is one throwaway line from his (equally underdeveloped) friend. She's trying to get him to sell the house, and she says something like, "Allie and {insert name of other friend who we met like twice and who we last heard had gone to fight overseas with Noah, gee, wonder what happened to him} aren't coming back." And we explore his feelings about that, almost none. I mean, he sings a whole song about it, but the lyrics are SO BROAD that I forgot what it was even supposed to be about. You learn nothing about him in it. I'm getting away from myself again, but the point here is: I think a lot of moments would've been much more effective sans-the-kid-gloves.
Here's what would've been the main argument of this review had I not been so put-off by the songwriting: Noah and Allie are not believable as a couple at all. The actors have chemistry, they're really doing a wonderful job, but there's only so much heavy lifting they can do! For god's sake, Noah tells Allie he's falling in love with her in the song immediately after they meet, and it's not even insinuated that very much time has passed in between. It comes off as gross and disingenuous; I was thinking, "who is this man? Get away from her!"
It's a classic case of "we don't want to use run time on building the relationship, we just want everyone to immediately root for them, so we're going to speed-run their courtship and call it 'love at first sight' to get away with it." And the reason they don't get away with it is that, yet again, there is no specificity! For real, I don't think they ever even say a single thing they like about each other. It's all just generic shit about hands and eyes. God. Allie recognizing his hands is this whole thing throughout the show, and it's yet another thing that just gets pulled out of her ass! There's no basis for her to be looking at his hands, there's no reason for it to come up, she just says it a whole bunch of times because the writers wanted a specific vehicle for the show, so they made one up without any care for the characters or their situation. Their whole connection is like that, it's just a shell of a relationship with no work done to substantiate it. I don't believe that man would build a whole house for some girl he hung out with for a month in high school, and I don't believe she'd leave her fiancé for the same. But they do it! Why? Because the writers needed them to. Lazy.
Pick a theme and Stick To It
Much like Allie with lovers, this show struggles to choose a message to commit to. I took notes on some of the ideas whose methods of appearance threaten ties to the overall takeaway of the show; many of which get left behind and never touched on again. I will now write them in list format, from most-to-least effective:
Memory
Waiting
Time/running out of it
People as home
Artistry/losing yourself in the expectations of others
The coexistence/relationship between sadness and joy
Aging/losing control of your body
Body insecurity
Forgiving one's mother for her past crimes against them (yeah, I didn't even bring this one up yet, that's how much other shit I had to say, but it was a big one! There's a whole stupid song, God, what a waste.)
I will now do something similar with symbols/motifs:
Houses
Light(s)
Rain/water
The sky in general/the Sun
Hands
Eyes (although I think this one is probably by accident and she just happens to write about eyes a lot)
Dinner??? (I included this because they eat dinner a few times and talk about it a lot. Seemed like it was intended to be a poignant thread between all the lovers; didn't really land.)
Snow/gardens/the Seasons
Writing/telling stories (just barely squeezed its way on here. I'm thinking also by accident.)
As far as motifs, The Notebook is all over the map. There's this recurring idea of "leaving the light on" for someone, which at first is this beautiful thing that you do for someone you love, even if you know they're not coming back; but then in the finale (which is just titled Coda, because even the writers couldn't figure out what the message of the show was), there's this part that's like..."will you wait for me? ...Or will you trace the sky? Watching birds fly by?"
So, wait, this whole show basically told me that to love someone is to wait for them...but now I'm not supposed to, and I'm supposed to...look at the sky instead? I've already said it, but what the fuck is this show talking about?
Allie has this recurring vocal line that begins "What happens to a person...[who forgets who she is, how to breathe, who cannot believe what she sees, etc.]" and I think I can see the goal with it...it's supposed to be foreshadowing/irony because she (Middle Allie) is talking about forgetting who she is without knowing that she will, inevitably, forget who she is, but for me it fell flat. She never finishes the question, it has nothing to do with anything that's going on, and it feels out-of-place in the moment. Every time it came up again the line stuck out like sore thumb, rather than feeling like a familiar thread or a return home, which is what a well-used motif will do.
The Actors
I will be brief because I'm excited to be done writing this so that I can stop thinking about The Notebook The Musical!
I will refrain from being specific because I am not a bully, but there was one actor in particular who was either having a very bad day or was hopelessly miscast. We can never know everything that goes on behind the scenes, but DAMN, I know at least 10 people who could've swept this person's ass off the boards. Just fully inappropriate for the role. I'm sure they're really wonderful in other shows, being an actor is hard, I'm happy for anyone who gets to live their dream, but yeah. Their performance was not beneficial to the show on this night.
Most of the actors are phenomenal and give honest, impressive, pitch-perfect performances. Seeing Joy Woods sing My Days live was a moment that made me think how grateful I am to finally be in the city, finally able to buy tickets to go see the thing I love so much. These will be the performances that we'll be teaching young actors about someday! It felt like being a part of history to me. THAT'S how good she is.
Admittedly, having the Younger/Middle/Older Allies/Noahs look nothing like each other did pull me out of the immersion a little bit. Just a little bit! It makes it feel like there's three entirely separate stories happening in tandem, rather than one common story being spread across the entire 2hr 20min run. Just takes a second to be like, oh, the old lady is the same person as the young lady. I'm not arguing there's any reason to change the casting, it's not a real issue and roles should always be played by whoever is good for them; I just thought I'd say it to have said it.
Did I cry: Obviously, it's about fucking Alzheimer's. Also, I got really emotional when they pulled up the curtain to show the band at the end— I saw the percussionist being just, like, VERY happy to be hitting the timpani and I lost it.
* She's really not.
Photo by Julieta Cervantes
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