Playwright: music & lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, book by Enda Walsh. At: Broadway in Chicago at the Ford Oriental, 24 W. Randolph St. Tickets: 800-775-2000; www.broadwayinchicago.com; $27-$95. Runs through: Oct. 27
Does anybody know of a performance space similar to The Storefront or the Lookingglass Water Works that happens to seat two thousand spectators? If the laconically titled Once were an old-school Broadway musical ( "Once!" or "Once: The Musical" ), replete with chorus lines riverdancing and Moiseyev-kicking to a synthesizer-heavy orchestra hidden behind a video-scrim, it could have fit snugly within any of the rehabbed movie emporiums downtownbut it's not, and since we're probably going to see many more shows like it, Broadway In Chicago will need a different kind of room to display them properly.
Once began as a humble little film about an Irish boy and a Czech girl who make music instead of lovehow's that for an original premise? It swept the Oscars, then the Grammies ( for its smash hit single "Falling Slowly" ), then the Tonys. Its setting is a Dublin pub and imagined forays into nearby environs, its story acted by onstage musiciansor onstage music provided by actors, if you prefer. The hoofing is closer to synchronized movement than formal terpsichoreal arrangementsno surprise, since director John Tiffany and movement designer Steven Hoggett are the duo that constructed manly ballets from military drills for The National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch. Besides, the actor/musicians are also the dancers. ( Could you turn pirouettes while simultaneously playing the cello? )
The performance currently occupying the drafty Oriental Theatre was not without a few opening night missteps, but the cast led by Stuart Ward and Dani de Waal, portraying the star-crossed composers, rallied behind Enda Walsh's surprisingly spartan book and Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's exquisitely stripped-down score to deliver bittersweet romance as brief and unfulfilled as such memories tend to be. Don't mistake this for tragedy, howeverthe art constituting the legacy of our platonic lovers endures far longer than cheap happy-ever-afters.
For now, Chicago audiences are forced to deal with a 1925-vintage auditorium effectively distancing them from the fun and camaraderie of this intimate musical non-musical. Go see it, anywaythe experience outweighs the obstacles, if for no other reason than to whet our appetites for later, smaller, productions ( perhaps at House Theater, where all company members are required play an instrument, even if it's just cowbell ).