Theatre in Review: John and Jen (Keen Company/Theatre Row)

	Kate Baldwin, Conor Ryan. Photo: Carol Rosegg

The mistakes of one generation play out in the next in John and Jen, the 1995 musical two-hander that introduced a young composer named Andrew Lippa. The book, co-written by Lippa and Tom Greenwald, employs a concept that is both elegant and tricky to get right. The first act, which covers the early 1950s and '60s, focuses on the two siblings of the title. Jen, the elder sister, is fiercely devoted to young John; she is especially dedicated to protecting him from their abusive father, whom John can't help worshipping. Jen attends college in New York and gets caught up in the tumult of the '60s; John grows closer to their father, enlisting in the Navy to obtain his approval. Brother and sister, now virtual strangers, find themselves becoming ideological enemies. They part badly, and a wartime tragedy leaves their relationship forever unresolved.

In Act II, Jen is now the divorced mother of a son named...John. Hell-bent on repairing the mistakes she made with her brother, she now commits an entirely new set of errors, smothering the poor boy with her attentions and burdening him with the task of living up to the memory of the uncle he never met. Their relationship becomes increasingly stifling until a gloves-off confrontation on the day of John's high school graduation finally points them both in a new and saner direction.

John and Jen is far from being a perfect work. A pair of Christmas sequences fall pretty flat, and some of the writing is gimmicky, especially "Talk Show," in which Jen and the younger John act out their conflicts as if being interviewed by Maury Povich or Sally Jessy Raphael. A new number, "Trouble with Men," makes a good point about Jen's issues with the opposite sex, but it sounds too sophisticated to come from the mouth of 11-year-old John. The authors have messed with the show's structure, dropping a number, "Dear God," featuring John embarrassing his sister at her baseball game with his jeers, which was balanced nicely by the Act II number "Little League," in which Jen mortifies her son at his baseball game with her raucous cheering.

There, I'm done complaining: For all that is wrong with it, John and Jen, the work of novice writers, burns with a wholly authentic passion, and it still contains some of Lippa's best work. "Welcome to the World" is a lovely expression of sisterly resolve, as Jen swears to the infant John that she will be his protector. "Hold Down the Fort," Jen's rueful parting message to her anxious, frightened brother as she leaves for New York, has a deep sense of regret buried in its lyrics. "Out of My Sight" amusingly details their spiky reunion a few years later, the leap in the melody line acting like a jab to the ego. (He: "Your clothes are so unique/Where did you get that rag?" She: "Wait till I show you my formal ensemble made out of the American flag!") And the final numbers, "The Road Ends Here," "That Was My Way," and "Every Goodbye is Hello," constitute a trio of emotional knockout punches as Jen faces her pain and folly, and humbly begins to make amends.

Jonathan Silverstein's thoughtful production generally lets the piece speak for itself, and he has found a fine pair for his John and Jen. In a role that Carolee Carmello made her own (her indelible performance can be heard on the original cast CD), Kate Baldwin has plenty to offer, plausibly maturing from a girl almost frantically hungry for life to a disappointed middle-aged woman seeking emotional solace by living in the past. A remarkably subtle actress for a musical theatre specialist, she only needs a swift, sudden turn of the head to signal unappeasable grief.

Baldwin's work goes a long way toward solving the biggest problem in the first act, namely Jen's arguably callous change of heart toward John once she is out of the house. And she avoids the ever-present pitfall of making Jen into a pathological case. Her combination of understated acting and powerful vocals pays off hugely, especially in the final numbers. By the conclusion of "The Road Ends Here" at the performance I attended, dry eyes were in drastically short supply. As the two Johns, the newcomer Conor Ryan isn't as persuasive as James Ludwig, who created the role, at evoking either character's childhood, but he excels at expressing restless adolescence. He also gives as good as he gets in the knock-down-drag-out confrontation that leads to the climactic emotional breakthrough. He also sings beautifully, especially in "Bye Room," in which the younger John jauntily catalogs his possessions before going to summer camp.

Silverstein has done such strong work with Baldwin and Ryan that I wish he had attended more to the physical production. Steven C. Kemp's strange set, a combination of tilted geometric shapes that reminded me oddly of the Buster Crabbe film Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars. At least it is lit with careful attention to each shift in mood by Josh Bradford. Sydney Maresca's costumes are cleverly conceived so that a single outfit, with small changes, can last across several time periods. Julian Evans' sound design includes a preshow soundscape of kids playing and crowds cheering at a baseball game. And unless I'm very much mistaken, neither actor is miked; if you've loved Baldwin's voice in Finian's Rainbow and Big Fish, you'll marvel to it in its unplugged glory here.

A deceptively simple piece, given its small size (the two-person cast is balanced by two musicians, on piano and cello), John and Jen dares to probe complex, ambivalent emotions, the push-pull of family relations that leave wounds not easily healed. And when it reaches its hard-won moment of forgiveness, the effect is quietly devastating. I can think of any number of conventionally "better" shows that aren't nearly as powerful. -- David Barbour