Theater: “Maybe Happy Ending” with Darren Criss
As some of you may know, I recently returned from a vacation in Asia, which included a few days in Seoul. Many adjectives spring to mind when I reflect on my time there: “modern,” “cosmopolitan” “historic,” “user-friendly,” “hip” and “English-speaking.”
“Weird” was a word that never entered my mind, until I saw “Maybe Happy Ending” which premiered at the Belasco Theatre last night.
Set in Seoul circa 2064, the musical features two “helper-bots” played by Darren Criss and Helen Shen. A helper-bot is a robot that looks like a human, and is used by a real human as a sort of man-servant or maid. They have memory chips and battery packs, similar to the phone you’re probably reading this on.
Oliver (Criss) lives a hermetic life in a home for retired robots. He listens to jazz LPs provided by his human owner James (Marcus Choi) and has been living with the hope that he may someday be called back to serve James. Claire (Shen) lives across the hall but unlike Oliver, acknowledges that her obsolescence is right around the corner. (For both of them, replacement parts have been discontinued.)
When Helen knocks on Oliver’s door, Oliver is initially hostile. (Her charging device has failed and she asks to borrow his on a regular basis.) Over time, they begin to not only tolerate but actually enjoy each other’s company. Helen convinces Oliver to drive south to the resort island of Jeju, on the premise of finding James. Her real motivation is to see the annual arrival of fireflies before her battery pack fails. Along the way they stay in a “Motel Sexx” and begin to suspect they may be “in love” but Oliver isn’t sure because he “isn’t programmed for love,” he explains.
It’s your choice as to whether this is typical rom-com material or just plain weird. What does fall into the latter category is the appearance of a Frank Sinatra-type crooner (Del Duran) in the middle of the action.
On a positive note, the stagecraft is impressive: former owners of both helper bots appear as holograms so we can see their previous and troubled relationship with their assistants. As for the cast, I especially liked Shen’s performance: she has great comic timing, sings well and as I recall, was the best thing about “The Lonely Few,” the earsplitting-ly loud musical at MCC last season.
As for Darren Criss, fans like me may be initially bewildered by his casting as the gawky Oliver, whose jerky moves belie his usual “Mister Smooth” personality. But he will sell a million tickets and for Broadway producers and fans, that’s perfectly fine.
With music and book by Will Aronson and Hue Park, “Maybe” recently garnered six Korean Music awards. But candidly there’s nothing Korean about it. If you’re searching for a taste of the real Korea, I suggest either a) visiting the country itself like we did or b) dining at Nari, a wonderful Korean restaurant about 10 blocks north on West 54 St. The lunch special is so enormous, you’d have to walk to the 38th Parallel and back to wear it off.
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