Theatre in Review: The Connector (MCC)

	Hannah Cruz. Photo: Joan Marucs

A slow season for musicals -- so far, that is; hold on for the spring onslaught -- gets a jolt with this tart tale of journalistic scandal, unfolding in the sunset of magazine publishing's golden era. The Connector isn't perfect, but it has a pulse, a point of view, and no use for easy sentiment. It is alive with nervous energy and alert to our creeping culture of untruth. It also features the best Jason Robert Brown score in years.

The Connector is a Manhattan-based weekly, founded during World War II, bearing a more than passing resemblance to The New Yorker. Everyone on staff is painfully aware of its storied history -- its famed founder gets name-checked seemingly every five minutes -- and its reputation for meticulous fact-checking. But it is 1996 and, even if nobody knows it, the glory days are in the rear-view mirror: A conglomerate with the fearsome name of VorschlagXE has moved in, and everyone is starting to wonder about the effect of the Internet. Not for nothing, we're told upfront that The Connector's days are numbered.

Into this faintly tense atmosphere enters Ethan Dobson, late of The Princetonian and hungry to assume his place in The Connector's hallowed halls. Taken up by the longtime editor Conrad O'Brien -- who sees in the gifted newcomer a mirror of himself long ago -- Ethan gets everyone's attention with a colorful, amusing piece about a professional Scrabble player who, ensconced in a Village bar, fleeces his challengers. (The character, Waldo, provides a showstopping turn for the always-welcome Max Crumm). Soon, Ethan is the in-house wunderkind, getting fan mail and (to joy in the C-Suite) boosting newsstand sales and reader engagement. Success only breeds anxiety, however, making the tyro reporter ever more desperate to hit a home run with each new effort. Alarm bells are ignored when he files a "character study" of Willis, a street kid claiming to possess a video of Jersey City's mayor smoking crack with a teenager. Willis has disappeared and so has the tape, but Ethan swears to have seen it. On publication, the story is a bombshell, and the mayor resigns. It's a triumph that also contains the seeds of disaster for both Ethan and The Connector.

If, at times, Jonathan Marc Sherman's book seems a tad glossy and unrealistic -- especially Conrad's decision to go with the thinly sourced, evidence-free Jersey City piece -- it strongly resembles the stranger-than-fiction story of Stephen Glass, whose serial fabrications, in the late 1990s, did considerable damage to The New Republic. (Certain incidents in the musical are taken directly from Glass' life.) But even as the show deliberately telegraphs its outcome, it arguably raises doubts about Ethan too quickly; it might be better if we saw more samples of his writing, giving us a chance to see how easily so many smart people fall for him. Also, Sherman's dialogue occasionally falters, allowing these sophisticates to communicate in clichés. This is especially true of Robin, Ethan's jealous female colleague, a fact-checker whose attempts at getting published are blocked by the magazine's glass ceiling. She acidly characterizes Ethan as one of the "Ivy League boys" who were "born on third base," adding, "I think you truly believe you hit a triple." (Conrad would blue-pencil that remark.) She has also written an essay titled, "How to Get Out of Texas: Backwards, in High Heels," a joke that wasn't fresh three decades ago.

Then again, as the action progresses, Sherman's construction has a steel-trap snap, setting up a tentative romance between Ethan and Robin, who will ultimately be responsible for his downfall. In one particularly nimble exchange, Robin, having rhapsodized about her idol, Katherine Anne Porter, asks Ethan to name his literary heroes. Lumbered by the question, he pauses a little too long before saying, "All the usual guys." Ben Levi Ross, who plays Ethan, looks utterly caught out, a hollow fanboy ravenous for acclaim yet without something to say.

Brown bears out this proposition in several songs. Basking in the glow of The Connector's fame, Ethan sings, "And you can see yourself/A fragment of, a fragment of/And you can see yourself reflected." Entranced by the sight of Conrad on a TV book chat show, he slips into the imaginary role of the interviewee, musing, "Let me just assure you/I wasn't planning to be/The voice of my generation"--which, of course, is the biggest lie of all.

Indeed, The Connector has a literate, mordant voice all its own. "Success" is a lively, amusing showcase for Waldo, the Scrabble shark. Robin commands our attention in "Cassandra," a scorching indictment of publishing world sexism. Muriel, the magazine's "fact-checking legend" and Ethan's natural enemy, has a wrenching solo about the personal price she has paid for her devotion to the truth. ("I'll believe in God when I see Her/I'll believe in Santa when the sleigh/Lands on my roof.") The climactic number "The Western Wall," features Ethan -- who has flown to Jerusalem on the magazine's dime to "research" a made-up story about an anonymous philanthropist -- wandering the city, lost in a fever dream of fantasies. As choreographed by Karla Puno Garcia, who does inventive work throughout, it's a stunning sequence that, in the best musical theatre tradition, reveals Ethan's character indirectly.

The Connector's tightly woven fabric of music and drama -- the action rarely pauses to allow for audience applause -- is staged with exceptional clarity and force by Daisy Prince (also the show's conceiver), featuring a cast skilled at creating sharp-tongued, sharp-elbowed characters. Ross' nerdy, eager, starry-eyed Ethan is as terrified as he is ambitious, his growing rudeness and complacency directly related to his suppressed self-contempt. (A former Evan Hansen, Ross twists that character's studied sensitivity, giving it a crafty, opportunistic edge.) Scott Bakula's Conrad can't help preening and pontificating just a bit, even as he worries that the clock is ticking on his career. (About his new corporate overlords, he muses, "They leave me the steering wheel/But they get the gas and brake.") He and Ethan are locked into a father-son-style bromance that will ruin them both. The third side of this triangle who Hannah Cruz's Robin, who, fed up with being marginalized by self-regarding men, acts as both an authoritative narrator and the plot's sword of justice.

In a strong supporting cast, the standout is Jessica Molaskey as Muriel, who doesn't care if anyone's writing has "verve" if it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. (When Conrad notes that Ethan has been nominated for a National Magazine Award, she snaps back, "Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.") Pulling off the production's niftiest double act is Fergie Philippe as a frequently overlooked contributing writer and as the possibly fictional Willis, reveling in his role as a whistle-blower. Also making solid contributions are Daniel Jenkins as the magazine's equivocating legal representation; Michael Winther, a perfect double for C-Span interviewer Brian Lamb; Ann Sanders as a bean-counting executive with elaborate office redecoration plans ("Turquoise walls are our signature!"), and Mylinda Hull as a nutso magazine superfan who reacts like a spurned lover when her letters to the editor get ignored.

Beowulf Boritt's sleek set design is backed by an enormous wall of magazines that features in a coup de théâtre just before the final blackout; lighting designer Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew uses it as a surface for chases and projections, which, among other things, announce the publication of each new Ethan Dobson opus. She also provides some nifty chases with the LEDs built into the deck. Márion Tálan De La Rosa's costumes manage the difficult trick of being true to a period of style just different enough from our own to be noticeable. Jon Weston's sound is sharp and intelligible throughout.

"We are not purveyors of facts/We are tellers of truths," Conrad sings early on, an assertion that only gets slipperier the more one thinks about it. Looking at the time frame of The Connector through the lens of all that has happened since -- alternative facts, fake news, and politicians and pundits fulminating about deep-state theories involving Taylor Swift -- Ethan seems almost innocent. But, as The Connector makes clear, the road to perdition starts with him. "We believe what we believe," he sings, "And all we want is someone/To confirm it," adding we "surround ourselves with people who/Believe the way do." It's a state of affairs he manipulates with rare skill. Sooner or later, however, reality comes calling. At least, looking at today's paper, I think it does... --David Barbour