‘[title of show]’ Unorthodox but Singing and Acting Excel

By Sandi Masori

CARLSBAD, California — When you first see the notice for [title of show] you may think it’s a mail merge error.  But in fact that is the name of the play currently being staged at New Village Arts in Carlsbad.  The title gives a hint to the subject matter of the show itself.

Writers Jeff Bowen (Tommy Tran) and Hunter Bell (Caleb Wohlgemuth) (the writers used their own names for the names of the characters) are trying to enter a competition to write a Broadway musical.  The problem, they have only three weeks to do it and are suffering from writers’ block. But they have their friends Susan (played by the uber talented Jewish community member and Jfest producer Becca Myers) and Heidi (Kylie Young), and off stage Larry (Nathan Waits) to help them.  And so, over the course of 90 minutes without an intermission, we watch a stream-of-consciousness style marathon on exactly what happened and what they said and did at each juncture.

They poke fun at themselves and even say how they’re going to include each conversation they have back into the show, and they do.  I guess that as they got producers, and staging they just added it into the show, so that it was almost a live running commentary on the process. It’s an interesting concept and probably plays best for other people in the business of writing/ producing plays.  For the general audience though it feels like a bit of a stretch.

To be completely honest, I’m a little surprised that [title of show] did in fact make it all the way to Broadway, though it only stayed there for a few months, from July 2008- Oct 2008).  It makes me really wonder what it will take to see shows like In Every Generation by Ali Viterbi get fully staged and performed.

The set is simple, as they say a few times in the show itself, basically 4 chairs and a table.  There are some books piled up on both sides of the stage and a slew of post-it-notes on the walls that are very familiar to most writers.

The acting and singing of the New Village cast is really good.  In all of the songs, which use a lot of harmony, the harmonies are tight, some of the best I’ve heard. And that’s consistent whether it was Tran and Wohlgemuth or Myers and Young, or all four of them together.  All of them are incredible singers and their voices work so well together.

Same for the acting; they are all compelling and really make you believe their role. I especially enjoyed getting to see Becca Myers shine after seeing her on the administrative end so often. I’d really love to see this cast together in a more traditional play.

As noted the performers are really, really good, but the script itself is … an interesting concept.

[title of show] runs through Sept. 21.

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Associate Editor Sandi Masori is a theater and food reviewer for San Diego Jewish World