Review: Maybe Happy Ending (2nd Visit)

Review of the Saturday, December 7, 2024 matinee performance at the Belasco Theatre in New York City. Starring Darren Criss, Helen J. Shen, Marcus Choi, Dez Duron and HwaBoon. Music by Will Aronson. Lyrics by Hue Park. Book by Will Aronson and Hue Park. Scenic design by Dane Laffrey. Costume design by Clint Ramos. Lighting design by Ben Stanton. Sound design by Peter Hylenski. Video design by George Reeve. Direction by Michael Arden. 100 minutes with no intermission. 

Something very special is happening this winter at the Belasco Theatre, where the cast, crew, and creative team of Maybe Happy Ending have worked together to create a nearly flawless gem of a modern musical. It’s a show that manages to be effortlessly entertaining while asking questions like: Would you want to know exactly how many days you had left on earth? Would you want to remember everything you’ve ever experienced with perfect clarity? And what would you do if you had the power to selectively erase those memories that cause you pain, but that also might be central to who you are as a person?

The burden of conveying all of this on stage falls squarely on the shoulders of actors Darren Criss (Oliver) and Helen J. Shen (Claire), playing a pair of obsolescent helper robots - although their beautiful performances can’t really be separated from the creative choices that also help to define their characters in exquisite detail. Of the two, Criss plays an older (but hardier) model, with a more conservative former owner. Accordingly, his speech and facial expressions are (at least initially) more constrained; his singing voice is mostly devoid of vibrato and other adornments; his clothes are stuffy and nondescript; and his apartment is such a perfect container for predictable behavior that he’s worn a hole in his carpet in the spot where he usually stands. Shen’s robot is a newer, superficially more capable model, her former owner younger and more fashionable, so she boasts an essentially human-like demeanor and, since this is a musical, an appropriately full-throated and expressive vocal delivery. Her clothes are varied and colorful, and the centerpiece of her very lived-in apartment is a battered bean-bag chair held together by duct tape. All of these factors come together to create two compelling and vibrant central performances.

To round out - or perhaps I should say square out - the cast, Dez Duron makes an important musical contribution as jazz vocalist Gil Brentley, and Marcus Choi breathes life into father-and-son pair James and Junseo. Both also play several other background characters, always to perfection.

The production design is a model of efficiency and plasticity, all in service of the characters and story. Near the beginning of the show, we see our two main robots in their respective apartments, the modular set (designed by Dane Laffrey) allowing for things to shift quickly between the two boxy rooms and the hallway between them. We see these spaces surrounded by a sea of black, emphasizing the robots’ isolation and the severe limits of their current worlds. As their shared experience expands to include a seedy motel, a ferry ride, and an island adventure, the set expands with them, aided by the striking lighting design (Ben Stanton) and extensive, sometimes realistic and sometimes diffuse projections (Laffrey and George Reeve). At other moments, the entire stage serves as a stark representation of the robots’ inner space, as they replay key memories in their relationships with human companions.

Mention has already been made of the crucial contributions of costume designer Clint Ramos in establishing character, and the same can be said of the hair/wig and makeup designs (Craig Franklin Miller and Suki Tsujimoto, respectively). An additional special mention should be made of the sound design by Peter Hylenski, which excels in all respects. I find that the orchestral accompaniment in current Broadway musicals tends to be either so amplified that it doesn’t always sound like it’s even being performed live, or, like the recent Sweeney Todd revival, detailed and present but not exactly immersive. Hylenski avoids both of these extremes by filling the auditorium with the authentic sounds of this show’s marvelous orchestra. In addition, while I am in the habit of using an assistive listening device especially for spoken dialogue, I found that they were barely needed in this case; the actors’ words were projected clearly and effectively.

Of course, all of these elements could only have come together so seamlessly under the confident hand of an expert director like Michael Arden. A seasoned and versatile actor himself, his talent and experience must have been especially critical in helping Criss and Shen to develop such compelling central performances. After a series of groundbreaking revivals of modern classics, it’s clear that Arden also has what it takes to create brand new ones, and I look forward to finding out what’s up next for him.

Amid all of this across-the-board brilliance, the true stars of the evening are really the musical’s creators, Will Aronson and Hue Park. They have crafted a story that is fun, deep, and fascinating, touching on multiple aspects of human and humanoid existence. A musical about robots in love could easily have come across as silly and/or predictable, but the brisk, episodic structure of the book and the precisely wrought dialogue ensure that that never happens here. Audiences love the familiar but they also need something novel, and that recipe is executed to perfection here, with a fairly straightforward love story punctuated by a few genuine surprises, both good and bad. (If I have one quibble about the book, it’s the slightly inconsistent use of the central plot device of robots needing to charge their batteries. At one point on their road trip, they both seem to desperately need to recharge, but then they appear to spend hours wandering around in the wilderness without an issue. But it wouldn’t be a genuine Broadway musical without at least one tiny plot hole!)

The tuneful, potent score includes a few conventional musical-theater tropes, such as a pair of scene-setting numbers for the main characters (“World Within My Room” and “The Way That It Has To Be”), a jaunty road-trip song (“Hitting the Road”), and an utterly enchanting duet (“The Rainy Day We Met”) where the main pair concoct a fictional backstory about how they might have fallen in love, but promise not to really fall in love, all while (of course) falling in love. But the nature of the characters and plot allows for some truly unique songs that make you think about familiar things in new ways. In “Goodbye, My Room,” each robot bids farewell to their old apartment as a proxy for the comfortable but stagnant lives they’re preparing to leave behind; when the song is reprised late in the show, the emphasis instead is on how love has given new meaning to old rooms. In “How Not to Be Alone,” Claire reflects on the darker side of love, which transforms a formerly complete individual into a now-incomplete part of a larger whole. The two robots contemplate their own nature and its relationship to actual outdoors nature in yet another beautiful duet, “Never Fly Away.”

The musical tone of the score manages to combine the seemingly opposite principles of intense feeling and emotional restraint - until that restraint falls under the weight of world-changing love, particularly in the ecstatic and climactic “When You’re In Love.” Built achingly out of the “low battery” chime heard throughout the show, this song embodies the mysterious connection between the peak experience of love and the ceaseless ticking of the clock. 

Rounding out the score are a few endearing diegetic jazz numbers for crooner Gil Brentley. These songs contribute some added variety to a soundscape otherwise dominated by Oliver and Claire; even more importantly, they’re cleverly arranged to function, in the vein of Kander and Ebb, as third-party commentary on the course of the robots’ burgeoning relationship.

The gorgeous orchestrations (by Aronson) are dominated by a small string ensemble, supplemented with a few woodwinds (whether acoustic or convincingly synthesized) for added color, and brass to support the jazz numbers. The orchestral texture is delightfully busy, often featuring several active and independent instrumental voices in support of the similarly dynamic sung melodies. The overall effect is one of unstoppable momentum, a musical reflection of the inevitable course of the central pair’s special connection. In almost all of these respects the orchestrations are reminiscent of those of The Light in the Piazza, and that is meant as the highest of compliments.

It’s pretty much impossible for a Broadway musical, or any work of music or art, to say something truly new and revolutionary; that’s not how we measure its greatness. In fact, in its emphasis on our collective race against the ultimate clock, Maybe Happy Ending has much thematically in common with another recent gem, Kimberly Akimbo, and probably with thousands of other novels, movies, paintings, and plays. Instead, the best of these works force us to look at important but familiar ideas in a new and unique light, enhancing our understanding of our world and ourselves. In using the story of two robots to teach us more about the human condition, Maybe Happy Ending is a spectacular artistic success.

Editor's Note: This review is by Mike, a frequent and valued contributor to this site. Thanks, Mike. I'm so glad you loved it as much as I did. Jeff