REVIEW: Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway
Hue Park and Will Aronson's jewel of a show is full of heart and could break yours.
“..In a great BIG Broadway Show!” sings Hattie Walker in Sondheim’s Follies. The musical and rhythmic emphasis land heavily on the word ‘big’, because that is what Broadway is about. Size is important on the Big White Way.
Jonathan Larsson’s Rent turned things around 30 years ago in response to mega-musicals by stripping out artifice and this year another outsider musical is about to do the same. Maybe Happy Ending is a South Korean originated musical with a cast of four that is currently selling out the Belasco Theatre on West 44th Street. Unlike Rent, this show looks beautiful, features the most wondrous technical scenic effects and has a melodic score of pop jazz tunes that stick in your head even as you are spilt out onto the street afterwards into the throngs of sparkling LED rickshaw riders blasting out Sabrina Carpenter. Oh, and the show is about robots.
More precisely Maybe Happy Ending tells the story of two retired Helperbots in the near future South Korea. Helperbots are human like robots who are essentially maids and carers for their owners, and, like any technology, are made obsolete by newer versions of themselves. They are then retired to the Helperbot Yards outside of Seoul where they are assigned to one room apartments until they can no longer replace the parts needed to keep them running.
We meet Oliver (Tony Nominee Darren Criss), a slightly jerky Helperbot who talks us through his days receiving copies of Jazz monthly, and spare parts through the mail chute and asking his version of Alexa if there is any mail from James Choi. There is never any mail from James and then his spare parts stop arriving - they are no longer produced and ‘no alternative is available.’ The clock is ticking and Oliver knows it.
His neighbour Claire needs help. She is a more advanced Helperbot ( a model 5 whereas he is a 3), but her charger is no longer functioning so she needs his help. It is the developing relationship between two characters aware of their own mortality that drives the show.
Oliver and Claire may disagree when concocting a story about how they met, and Claire may have better (artificial) emotional intelligence but they know that they need each other. They take a roadtrip to Jenju Island to see the fireflies that Claire loves and the owner that Oliver is convinced is coming to collect him.
There are emotional and musical layers in this show that are handled gently, intelligently and with a huge amount of affection. Oliver has taken his former owner’s love of Jazz and the writers have created a fictional jazz crooner called Gil Brentley played magnificently by Dez Duron whose voice is a warm late night cocktail of Harry Connick Jr and Sinatra. His songs act as a commentary on the action but are not pastiche or cod, instead they are genuinely well written pieces. We hear them as interludes before realising that the singer is asking‘Why Love?” because he wants to consider the question: in the same way that Gil Brentley’s voice gradually comes into audio focus during the song , so too do the songs’ intentions become clearer during the show.
The direction and design of Maybe Happy Ending by Michael Arden and Dane Lafferty employ huge amounts of creative energy to serve up something that functions smoothly and beautifully. Trucks containing rooms drift smoothly in and out, a grand piano and string quartet in a forest rises effortlessly where a few seconds earlier we saw the living room of a house. Production Stage Manager Justin Scribner and his crew are earning their money on this show.
There is a series of beautifully executed video design pieces by George Reeve that come alive out of the stage in three dimensions showing us flashback scenes, backdrops and a rain shower that makes you want to open an umbrella. Every design choice enhances the show’s world building without having to always be literal or overly detailed; the actors position suitcases to represent a car which is such a human touch because it makes us imagine and project our own emotions onto the scene.
And, in a way, this is what Maybe Happy Ending does all the way through. We know these are two machines, trying to discover what falling in love means except they can’t because, duh, they are robots. So we project our desires onto them, maybe magnifying their feelings and desires in our own minds to align with our own.
The writers cleverly bring us down to earth in How Not To Be Alone when Claire sings
“So here we are in some motel,
Trying to do what neither of us does well.
We have to not be alone”
They are staying in a Sex Motel at this point in the show so our first thought might be that what they don’t do well is sex. Again we get the line and then the understanding because Claire tells us the neither of them does not being alone well and then explains why. In fact she is enjoying the work it takes to get used to Oliver’s quirks even though they are not her style. By the end of her song the character has gone from being unsure to being sure and even recognises that Oliver might be changing too. It is such a joy to hear a song that takes a character on an emotional arc like this. Inside the technology of the show, inside the robots is a real human musical theatre heart beating its rhythms and handing the audience a tissue with nothing more than melody, words and fine acting.
As humans we know what Claire is feeling; when the lust levels even out there is work to be done on not being alone or being together - is anyone else reading Being Alive here? These two have skipped the desire part and have realised directly that they will be relying on each other for more than company; she cannot charge her battery without him and he cannot physically navigate the world without her because his wifi chip is discontinued. Their relationship is mutually beneficial like two flesh and blood people living together where each has skills or abilities that the other does not and although this version is mechanical, we (they) imbue it with emotion.
By this point in the show (around halfway), there are already moist eyes and people quickly swiping the back of their hands over their cheeks, hoping that nobody notices.
At the end of the show the robots make a choice which pretty much finished off anyone who still had dry eyes. How can robots who have no emotion, trigger such strong emotion in us?
The book, the music, the concept and the orchestrations (which are stratospheric) all form the foundation of Maybe Happy Ending. The performances of Darren Criss and Helen J Shen lift the show into the realms of the heavenly. How do you give heart and soul to a machine? Both of these talented actors are experts at the art of acting through song: of using emotion rather than riffing to tell a story. They trust their formidable abilities and the richness of the material to engage the audience. It is truly shameful that Ms Shen was not recognised by the Tony committee for her performance because it is as powerful as any of the other women in the category even though she might not be shouting about it.
The final actor in the ensemble is Marcus Choi who plays several characters including Oliver’s owner James. He brings a weight and groundedness to James in his few scenes that makes us feel like everything is fine and ordered like staying at your grandparents’ house and sleeping under heavy blankets instead of a light duvet.
Maybe Happy Ending is a new musical on Broadway that stands in contrast to other shows. It is not derived from existing IP, it is not a jukebox musical, it has no dance numbers and it only runs for one perfectly formed act. All the things that the show is not make it what it really is; a throwback to another Broadway era. A time when there were shows that told thought provoking, unpredictable and deeply emotional stories. Shows that left the audience discussing themes not memes. Step forward Follies, Company, A Chorus Line, Evita, Tell Me On A Sunday, Rent and Hamilton.
In the same way that it takes a pair of robots to show us our humanity from the outside, it looks like it might have taken a pair of outsiders to create a show that will make Broadway look at itself through a new lens and realise what a musical can be.
Maybe Happy Ending is running at The Belasco Theatre. Find out more HERE
FOOTNOTE.
Maybe Happy Ending has rightly been nominated for Best New Musical in the Tony Awards and stands a strong chance of winning. There are five nominations, two of which, Buena Vista Social Club and Death Becomes Her are based on existing IP, two were originated outside of the US (Maybe Happy Ending in South Korea and Operation Mincemeat in the UK ) and the fifth, Dead Outlaw arrives with great reviews and a shed load of Off Broadway awards. It is also the only truly original American musical to be nominated this year elbowing out Redwood, Smash, Boop, A Wonderful World and Real Women Have Curves. Think about that; only one original new American musical nominated for a Tony in 2025.