Kokandy Production’s Derek Van Barham, a very talented young director, has made a habit of rehabilitating failed musicals with intimate, Chicago-style stagings centered on runway configurations with the audience on both sides.
Last fall, in the famous Chopin Theatre basement, Van Barham took a worthy stab at “American Psycho,” a bloodbath on Broadway. Now, in collaboration with co-director Brittney Brown, he’s turned his attention to “Alice by Heart,” a musical with a book penned by Steven Sater and a score by Duncan Sheik, the team responsible for the hit 2006 show “Spring Awakening,” a game-changer when it came to innovative Broadway musicals.
“Alice by Heart,” which credits Jesse Nelson as a co-writer, was commissioned and first produced by London’s National Theatre in 2012; it then moved to New York and did poorly off-Broadway. To the best of my knowledge, it’s not been professionally performed in Chicago before. And there’s a reason for that.
As you might expect from the title, “Alice by Heart” is a riff on Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” In the outer frame, we meet a teenage Alice sheltering in a tube station during the London Blitz in 1941; her young pal Alfred has tuberculosis and is isolated within the shelter. Alice, scared for her pal, disappears into Wonderland, in her mind at least; Alfred (who was played by Ben Platt in an early workshop) morphs into the White Rabbit. Thereafter, we get a meditation on grief, loss, sexual awakening, the loss of childhood innocence and the journey toward self-actualization. (Pretty much the same themes as “Spring Awakening.”)
The book not only doesn’t sufficiently link the outer frame with the “Alice” story, it has too fractured an emotional trajectory, leaving you searching throughout the show for the heart of the story. The real appeal of the show, such as it is, resides in Sheik’s music. If, like me, you’re a fan, you’ll enjoy hearing a plaintive and potent song suite. I’m listening to the beautiful “Afternoon” as I write this piece and “Some Things Fall Away” is quite lovely, too.
Kokandy’s production comes with superb musical direction from Heidi Joosten; it’s far from easy to perform this score with the five-piece orchestra off in the corner and the audience far closer. And the show has wonderful vocalist in the lead role of Alice: I loved hearing Caitlyn Cerza sing and Joe Giovannetti, who plays Alfred, is great, too. Add in some smokey and intense voices elsewhere in the ensemble and all are doing right by Sheik’s music.
That said, much of the comedy feels overplayed for so small a space and Cerza’s Alice is costumed austerely, so that her budding self struggles to break out from the period veneer. And although Van Barham and Brown have put together some very cool visuals, the issues with the book are very hard to overcome. Maybe a simpler production would have been a better choice; it’s just a difficult piece to make fully work, not least because it never seems quite ready to commit to being a full-blown musical. The big themes are there but are insufficiently traced and developed.
On the way out, I was thinking it was past time for Van Barham, who I admire, to take on some top-drawer material. That way his immense creativity will get a head start.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Alice by Heart” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Sept. 29
Where: Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $45-$55 at Kokandyproductions.com
