Theatre in Review: The Fortress of Solitude (Public Theater)

	Adam Chanler-Berat. Photo: Joan Marcus

The title of The Fortress of Solitude, an allusion to Superman's North Pole hideaway, is an appropriate choice for a story about adolescents whose perceptions are profoundly shaped by comic books. But more than once the other night at the Public, it occurred to me that it would take a team of creative superheroes to distill Jonathan Lethem's sprawling, complex novel into a manageable musical drama. There are many moments when The Fortress of Solitude approaches the richness of its source material, but in trying to match the novel's scope, it ends up tripping over itself.

As in the novel, The Fortress of Solitude focuses on two motherless youths whose intense friendship is shaped by the political, racial, and cultural realities of New York in the late 1970s and early '80s. We are in the Gowanus (now the Boerum Hill) section of Brooklyn, where townhouses that have seen better days share space with public housing, and the population is, as they say, very mixed. Young Dylan Ebdus, who is white, lives there because his mother, Rachel, an ex-hippie still seeking the Age of Aquarius, has a vision of urban racial harmony. It's a lovely thought, but this is a New York soured by fiscal defaults, electricity blackouts, and Son of Sam, and the street-savvy kids on the block treat Dylan, a natural nerd, like a punching bag. Even worse, Rachel hits the road, leaving the boy behind with his withdrawn father, Abraham, a painter and animator.

Eventually, Dylan befriends Mingus Rude, a black kid with an even more complicated history. His father, Barrett Rude Junior was the front man for the Subtle Distinctions, a second-tier soul group that grasped at fame and missed; he spends his days sunk in an easy chair, watching television in a cocaine haze, occasionally singing backup to pay the bills. Completing the household is Barrett Rude Senior, a preacher released from prison following a scandal involving some of the young ladies in his congregation. The two defeated men live in a constant state of tension, leaving Mingus pretty much on his own.

Dylan and Mingus eventually develop a bond that is both erotically charged and endowed with magical-realist elements -- the latter thanks to Rachel's abandoned wedding ring, which apparently endows them with the ability to fly. But the world around the boys is changing -- just as the era of soul music, personified by Barrett Junior burns up in a disco inferno, only to be replaced by the hip-hop revolution, their shabby neighborhood is gradually invaded by an all-white gentrifying class, bringing with them smart restaurants and skyrocketing rents. The breaking point comes when Dylan, who, despite his slacker habits is intellectually gifted, gets into Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, leaving behind a hurt and betrayed Mingus to fend for himself in Brooklyn.

From here on in, they head in wildly different directions -- Dylan to college at UC Berkeley and a high-profile career as a music journalist, while Mingus, following a shooting incident at home for which he takes the fall, becomes a lifelong recidivist, hawking drugs when not in prison. Dylan, for whom self-loathing is now second nature, tries to reconnect with his past by assembling a boxed set of Barrett Junior's records for commercial rerelease; this leads to a poignant, you-can't-go-home-again reunion with the people who shaped his youth.

Itamar Moses' libretto pares away enormous chunks of the novel, including Dylan's stay in the country with the Fresh Air Fund, his time at Camden College (read: Bennington), and, arguably the book's biggest tour-de-force, his all-night prowl through the Bay Area in search of women and trouble. Even so, the Dylan-Mingus relationship -- a complex thing marked by hero worship, occasional sex, and shifting power balances -- never acquires the necessary depth of feeling. We don't get a strong enough sense of their private world, influenced by comics and pop music and driven by nights spent roaming the borough, tagging buildings and subway cars with graffiti. The essential emotional underpinning -- two deprived boys providing for each other what the adults in their lives cannot -- isn't rendered vividly enough to anchor the rest of the drama.

Better songs -- that really probe the characters' hearts and minds -- would have helped, but neither Moses nor Michael Friedman, who wrote the score, have found a way to make music central to the action. (This is especially surprising since Lethem's book is intoxicated with music.) Much of the time, the songs provide a kind of running background while doing little to engage with what is really happening between the characters. The opening, which depicts the many forces at work in the neighborhood, starts things off on the right sassy note, and Friedman does work up a couple of plausible pastiches of Smokey Robinson-style soul for the Subtle Distinctions, but once again his songs have a halting quality based on appealing hooks that are repeated, rather than developed, until they simply come crashing to a halt.

Under the direction of Daniel Aukin (who also conceived the project), a cast of familiar faces does their best with a bevy of underwritten roles. Adam Chanler-Berat, who has cornered the market on nerdy, insecure musical theatre leads, doesn't do much that you haven't seen before, although he is convincing as the older, sadder Dylan. Kyle Beltran finds many notes of melancholy and resignation behind Mingus' poker face, and much of the emotional impact of the final meeting between Dylan and Mingus is due to his performance. Kevin Mambo doesn't have much to do as Barrett Junior, but he delivers the Subtle Distinctions' numbers with real élan. Ken Barnett is wasted as Abraham, who has little to do but look abstracted. In a show already oversupplied with weak father figures, André De Shields initially makes an impact as Barrett Senior, but the role is really just a device to move the plot along. Kristen Sieh is appealing as Rachel, although the show never stops to wonder why she had to abandon her husband and son. David Rossmer makes a good impression as an even bigger loser than Dylan who, thanks to business acumen, ends up the boss of the gentrified neighborhood. The always-welcome Rebecca Naomi Jones is effective in the underwritten role of Dylan's California girlfriend, who wants to know why he has written so extensively about the Subtle Distinctions without revealing his personal connection to Barrett Junior.

Given the multiplicity of locations, Eugene Lee's extremely spare, two-level set seems like a reasonable solution; Tyler Micoleau adds visual variety with his lighting, including some kicky color washes on the upstage wall. Jessica Pabst's costumes are solid. Robert Kaplowitz's sound design is first-rate, achieving an ideal balance of voices and musicians and ensuring that every sung word is intelligible.

Making a musical of The Fortress of Solitude was an idea worth trying, and thank God for the Public Theater's commitment to supporting risky new musical theatre work. But something vital has been lost in translation. In trying to catch the melody of Lethem's prose, they somehow missed the meaning.--David Barbour