Playwright: music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth. At: Griffin Theatre at Stage 773 ( fka Theatre Building ) , 1225 W. Belmont. Phone: 773-327-5252; $22-$32. Runs through: Nov. 14
It's said that a drowning person recalls their entire life before perishing. Bobby's life flashes through his mind on his 35th birthday. Oh, only his current life, replete with friends—married, single, divorced or in-between—listening to his marital clock tick away, thus making the question precipitated by this occasion whether he will retain his bachelor lifestyle or pursue holy matrimony ( aka "settle down" ) .
His crisis is the pretext for a string of Stephen Sondheim meditations on the search for a partner, upper-Manhattan in 1970 style. The wedlocked couples in his circle are far from ideal examples of their ilk: Sarah and Harry bond over karate lessons while lying about their healthy habits. Jenny and David experiment with—ahem!—marijuana. Joanne loathes her privileged life, but husband Larry understands. Amy succumbs to an acute case of cold feet just before her wedding, but fiancé Paul understands. Bobby's unattached comrades offer likewise ambiguous testimony: April's career as a flight attendant keeps her on the move, Kathy has found a mate elsewhere, Marta is having too much fun to marry. And what is Bobby to make of Peter and Susan, whose mutual affection flowers with the termination of their nuptial contract?
The score is Sondheim at his most idiosyncratic—the agitated tempos, syncopated rhythms, erratic phrasing, atonal intervals and soaring fermatas comprising his stock-in-trade very much in evidence. Still, nobody ever went broke celebrating the Noah's Ark imperative, however spurious their defense of that social custom, and this roster includes a sufficient number of wedding/cabaret/audition standards to satisfy fans of all opinions.
Dana Tretta stops the show with the fevered "Another Hundred People," as does Darci Nalepa on the tongue-twisting "Getting Married Today" ( despite the audial distortion engendered by the exposed-brick walls in Stage 773's north room ) , while Samantha Dubina nails the timing perfectly in the anecdote leading up to the wistful "Barcelona." Erin Kilmurray's dance and Ryan Borque's martial-arts choreography lend visual dazzle to what is essentially a collection of soliloquies, while Benjamin Sprunger as the ambivalent Bobby and a mostly youthful, but uniformly attractive, ensemble overcome the quaint sentimentality of their material with a conviction capable of coaxing heaps of weeps from all but the most stubborn loners.
