The best thing you can say after a joyful musical is “I want that in my life”. And, yes, after watching The Kid, I can honestly say that I want that in my life. A kid, maybe or maybe not, but the completeness of experience that the main character achieves is utterly relatable, it took me by surprise.
Based on Dan Savage’s account of him and his younger partner’s adoption of their son, The Kid is very much an old fashioned book musical. Likeable characters express their feelings in song, there are archetypes abound, and it ends with a happy conclusion. The show is endearingly sentimental, if a bit too smooth for its own good. Savage is fairly well-known as a columnist on “politics and relationships” (read: sex) – a joke that gets reused about a half-dozen times throughout the show. He’s always been fairly open about his personal life, and other people’s personal lives, without too much concern for over-sharing. After all, his column’s subject is already over-sharing.
I’m not going to go into the story too much. If you’re really curious, read the book. Gay couple in Portland goes through open adoption process. Since it’s a real story, we know the couple not only stays together, but they’re also very happy with their son. So, really, any thoughts are less about plot and more about how it all gets delivered to the audience.
Portraying the author is one of my favorite theatre guys, Christopher Sieber. Fresh off of his lovingly campy Tony-nominated turn in Shrek (and a TV pilot that apparently didn’t get picked up), Sieber plays something of the straight/conventional man. While the show is ostensibly about the gay adoption process, the arc of Michael Zam’s book and, to some extent, Jack Lechner and Andy Monroe’s songs, are actually focused on Dan’s growth as a person. It’s a fairly relatable character arc, and Sieber does quite well despite the broadly painted role.
Joining him on his adoption adventure is Dan’s quite younger partner, Terry, played here by Lucas Steele. It was my understanding that there were only about 8 years between the two, but given the ages of the two actors, not to mention their physical differences, it looked closer to 15-20. However, Steele (who looks eons younger in person than he does in photos) is a good foil for Sieber. He is able to stand up to his counterpart’s formidable stage presence, and has a great voice. And hair. Oh, that hair. It gets flipped a few times, and it’s almost an extension of his personality. I’m not sure whether the hair was so present in the book, but regardless, it adds a bit to the character.
There are some other characters, including Dan’s mom (played by Jill Eikenberry), their adoption counsel (played by Susan Blackwell), the mother of their to-be-adopted son, the biological father, and a host of interchangeable roles that have names but aren’t exactly needing much specificity outside of the plot. Eikenberry does well in her token, mother-knows-best role. There isn’t much to do but portray warmth, but she handles it without anything feeling forced. Blackwell, a cult figure to some in the theatre community for stealing [title of show] right out from under it, shows a bit of range in a far-from-type restrained role – which is good to see. I’d love to see her get a meaty featured role, perhaps in something more dramatic.
The rest of the cast does well, including a very sobering turn by Jeannine Frumess as a pregnant, homeless young woman who eventually turns over the titular child to the adoptive couple. Apparently, at some point, there were a number of jokes about how she smelled, but they were very clearly making changes and dropped those. The role is written to be restrained, and Frumess executes her performance with a nice balance of soul and distance. Other than being notable, Ann Harada doesn’t really have much to do, but then again, most of the remainder of the cast are somewhat interchangeable, including an always game Tyler Maynard. If I have any complaints about the cast, it’s that the roles aren’t written out enough for there to be any substance for them to work with other than caricature. That might have been the point, but it felt somewhat distracting.
As for the production, there are some nice video moments to move things along, and the set worked quite well as an apartment, a club, a hotel room, a pizza place, and a hospital. Derek McLane (of course) is one of the best set designers in theatre, and did a great job again here.
So it all comes back to the show. While a gay adoption story could have some really powerful moments, this one had a lightness and was overflowing with warmth and impending joy. And that joy gets transferred to the audience. Which is really a pleasure. There are some memorable musical moments to move the audience through the show, if not as unique or creative as they could be. While the book is a bit broad and will likely get some more tweaking as it moves up (I’m assuming) to Broadway next season, overall, The Kid is an old-fashioned, everyone-enjoys-it, have-a-good-time musical. And worth catching when it does make its way back to the stage.
As I mentioned, when I left, I really felt drawn to the circumstance the characters went through. The feeling of completeness we all, in one way or another, are looking for. I walked out of the performance with a bounce in my step, looking to figure out what that completeness is for me. And that, after all, is what we want from a joyful show.
[...] had the emotional resonance of Yank!, the elegance of The Scottsboro Boys, the feel-good joy of The Kid, or the grand rock-star quality of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. No new play had the complexity [...]