You don't need to be familiar with Macbeth to enjoy this show, but you'll spot some fun parallels if you are, and even certain famous lines said in ways you don't expect. Our power-hungry couple here are diner workers Mac and Pat. Mac has lots of great ideas (chicken balls, the insides of donuts, an intercom/window system) but no follow-through. That's where Pat comes in. She convinces him to pitch his ideas to diner owner Duncan. When it doesn't go as planned, they begin to take desperate measures. And just like the Macbeths, they have to continue the desperate measures to cover up what they did and keep their success (they take over the diner and turn it into a very familiar burger joint with an M logo) on track. But things start to fall apart, and the prophesy of doom from the three witches... er, stoners, comes true.
Book writer Michael Mitnick (who co-wrote Fly by Night, another delightful little musical, seen at the Jungle a few years ago) sites Sweeney Todd and Little Shop as inspirations, and Scotland, PA definitely has that feel, if less somber than the former and less campy than the latter. He was paired with composer/lyricist Adam Gwon for this show, who also wrote Ordinary Days, produced by Nautilus in 2013, which won them an Ivey and this praise from a certain theater blogger: "The new musical Ordinary Days is everything I want musical theater to be - original, authentic, relevant, moving, and compelling." I can only hope that the success of Scotland, PA (because it's sure to be a success) will inspire local theaters to do more of Adam Gwon's work, including the practically perfect (and easy to stage, with a four-person cast and just a piano accompaniment) Ordinary Days. But back to the show at hand. This is such a fantastic score, a rock musical with some '70s sounds, and some soaring musical theater songs. Like I remember from Ordinary Days, there are some wonderful unexpected melodies and harmonies, and little story songs that further the plot and give us insight into these characters. I would love a cast recording of this show, recorded by this cast, please.
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| Mac and the stoners (Deidre Cochran, Matt Reihle, Will Dusek, and Tara Borman, photo by Dan Norman) |
Tara Borman, Deidre Cochran, and Matt Riehle are so delightful as the witches/stoners, no bubbling cauldron but lots of mind-altering substances that turn them into super chill portents of doom. They appear throughout the show as voices in Mac's head, providing harmony and hilarity. Other highlights in the cast include, well, everyone. We have the always amazing Kim Kivens as diner worker Mrs. Lenox; understudy Tom Reed (stepping in a few days before opening) as the sweet but very dumb Banko (who's maybe not as dumb as he seems); veteran actor Timothy Thomas as the bad boss Duncan; Joshua Row as his angry teenage son Malcolm who shares a secret soft side; Carl Swanson as a smarmy co-worker, down-on-his-luck former gym teacher, and others; and Emily Gunyou Halaas popping up just before intermission as Detective McDuff, here to spoil Mac and Pat's plans.
The set of Scotland, PA is dominated by what look like huge furry tree trunks, perhaps hinting at Macbeth's prophesy of approaching woods spelling downfall for the ambitious king. The five-piece band (conducted by Sanford Moore on keyboard, with music direction by Joshua Zecher-Ross) is visible on an elevated platform behind a scrim. The cute diner set is quickly rolled on and off the stage, turned around and modified as plot requires. The transformation from Duncan's diner to McBeth's is quite clever, with a familiar enough design and color scheme to evoke that other Mc hamburger joint, but hopefully not similar enough to get sued. Bold lighting design ramps up the tension in the story. And I'm not sure that setting the story in the '70s matters, except it allows for some groovy fashions on display. (Scenic design by Mina Kinukawa, lighting design by Grant E. Merges, costume design by Zamora Simmons-Stiles.)
Theater Latte Da is always about pushing the envelope and moving the music-theater form forward into the future, and they've done that here with supporting the development of and now producing what feels like a wholly original musical, even if it is an adaptation of a movie that's an adaptation of a Shakespearean classic. The source material is endlessly malleable and adaptable, with its evergreen themes of greed, ambition, and guilt, and this piece brings it into the modern day - with music!