One factor we will say for sure about June is that she’s all about two issues — sleuthing within the streets, and homicide within the sheets.
This can be an excessively simplistic summation of the world premiere of “Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical” at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, co-produced with Middle Repertory Firm. Inside that killer title awaits a musical providing extra future potential than current delight, with a grand meeting of massively murderous Bay Space skills able to get freaky and begin slayin.’
Jade (Sophie Oda) isn’t in contrast to many influencers that mine the interwebs for clicks and engagement, and definitely not in contrast to many who’ve gotten themselves canceled for unhealthy habits. This time, it’s a sizzling digicam choosing up some ageist remarks after a reside shot ends. Inside seconds, the “Jade Brigade” goes poof.
However as luck would have it, an opportunity for Jade to show she’s down for the elders comes within the type of saving her grandmother June (Emily Kuroda), who’s being faraway from her San Mateo senior housing unit for lovemaking expertise that, shall we embrace, bloodbath on the mattress?
When Jade arrives with loyal Dean (Miller Liberatore) to scope out the scenario, a number of sexual power awaits, a bevy of seniors with absolutely activated libidos. These people embrace the squirrel-loving Vicki (Lucinda Hitchcock Cone), on-the-prowl Bernice (Jacqueline De Muro), who likes to bag younger 55-ers, and the charming and supportive DeeDee (Cindy Goldfield), whose all for her husband Mort (Danny Scheie) embracing his late-stage bisexuality.
The girl who brings the funk to the house is June, who has develop into one thing of a persona non grata in the neighborhood, a resident believed to grab up the ground-round, top-choice meat and hold it for herself.
Min Kahng, a triple menace who dealt with the ebook, music and lyrics, makes good use of his skills, a composer who can work in witty lyrics that embrace loads of zingers, offering effusive humanity inside a narrative of senior sexual liberation. Jeffrey Lo’s course has its personal sharpness, particularly in a handy guide a rough first act that cleanly focuses its lens, assisted mightily by the glitzy projections design by the late David Lee Cuthbert and Tasi Alabastro’s projections content material creation.
Whereas Act 1 does its attributable to set up a world of colourful characters blessed with oodles of quaint quirk, act two will get murky and decelerates, faltering because it makes an attempt to fuse two distinct tales inside one narrative. There’s a lot to compel surrounding the commentary round influencer tradition and the hurt that society locations on these flashes within the pan who know find out how to use CapCut, there’s additionally a homicide thriller and household drama that trudges in direction of its denouement with out the panache wanted to reach there.
Regardless of the present feeling as if there may be nonetheless room to develop together with a wholesome chop to its 155-minute runtime, what can’t be denied are the pleasant characterizations that Kahng’s thoughts has constructed, and the pillars of Bay Space appearing expertise that Lo assembles and disseminates all around the stage, the mother jean finances for Jill C. Bowers’ joyous costumes proving to be fairly plentiful.
Kuroda is tasked with carrying the load on her shoulders and delivers, singing and dancing with exhausting verve whereas dipping into the emotional calls for of a personality atoning inside her lengthy life. Goldfield is immediately likable as Mort’s higher half, urging huge guffaws in a few of Kahng’s finest characterizations: Cone’s subplot concerning a squirrel builds a duality of each allure and melancholia, Cone’s Vicki discovering the humor contained in the getting older course of which faces us all. And Scheie is a grasp of surprises, a performer prepared with a yelp or a bellow who’s missed when not instantly in entrance of an viewers.
Oda is a revelatory younger appearing and vocal expertise, commanding the stage inside a masterful efficiency, the reality of Jade’s private persona an attention-grabbing dichotomy from how the general public is aware of her. Liberatore’s pet canine consideration as loyalite Dean compels, craving to carry Jade’s kiss and never simply her digicam.
“Happy Pleasant Valley” isn’t there but, however actually feels prefer it’s on the best way in direction of one thing grand, that uncommon musical which facilities on older characters who aren’t merely current to touch upon the youngsters in that “We’re old now and we know better” sort of method. Heck, there might even be a Blissful Nice Valley franchise on the horizon.
As a result of if we will’t get “Happy Pleasant Valley 2: Mort’s Revenge” on a stage sometime, what was the purpose of all this anyway?
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Affiliation and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.bsky.social.
‘HAPPY PLEASANT VALLEY: A SENIOR SEX SCANDAL MURDER MYSTERY MUSICAL’
By Min Kahng, offered by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Via: March 30
The place: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Street, Palo Alto
Tickets: $34-$115; theatreworks.org
Dates: June 1 – 29
The place: Lesher Middle for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
Tickets: $66 – $95; centerrep.org
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