Theatre in Review: The Notebook (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)

	John Cardoza, Dorian Harewood, Ryan Vasquez. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Broadway is looking rather like The Book of the Month Club these days, what with the spring season featuring musical adaptations of The Great Gatsby, S. E. Hinton's young adult classic The Outsiders, and Water for Elephants, based on Sara Gruen's blockbuster novel. The Notebook, another émigré from the best-seller list, wants to jerk tears by the gallon and, based on the rising sea of sniffles around me at the Schoenfeld the other night, it is succeeding on a grand scale. My Kleenex remained unstained, however; if you harbor even a trace of skepticism, think carefully: This may not be your optimum choice for a Broadway night out.

The Notebook is based on the novella of the same name by Nicholas Sparks, whose oeuvre, the program says, has sold more than one hundred million copies in fifty languages -- proof positive that people on airplanes must have something to do. It (and the subsequent hit film) follows the relationship of Allie and Noah, whom we see at three turning points: as star-crossed teen lovers, as thirtysomethings dealing with an unexpected reunion, and, in their seventies, as residents in an assisted-living facility where Allie struggles with dementia. In the latter scenes, Noah tries to calm Allie by reading from the notebook of the title, which details their stop-and-start romance. Noah is certain the words can coax his beloved out of her profound mental fog, an epic act of magical thinking in real life but par for the course in musicals aimed at your tear ducts.

The Notebook recounts an untaxing tale of love triumphant: Noah -- a country boy, at seventeen already a pillar of adult virtue -- and Allie -- a mildly rebellious daughter of privilege -- are summer lovers, leading to secret assignations and plenty of ballad singing. (We are somewhere along the mid-Atlantic coast, in 1967.) Allie's parents -- convinced that their daughter deserves better than a beau who toils in a lumber yard -- break up the affair, calling the cops on Noah and dragging Allie back to their home in the city. Ten years later, Allie is engaged to a public defender but feels dissatisfied with life; Noah, having survived Vietnam, sits alone in the abandoned house he restored, reading poetry and looking dejected. Seeing his picture in a newspaper, she hunts him down -- her wedding is only a few days away -- resulting in plenty of canoodling and fretting. Do they get together? Does Allie's fiancé get the heave-ho? If not, who is that couple in the old-age home?

The lack of suspense is only one of The Notebook's problems; another is that Allie and Noah are little more than attractive cutouts suitable for posing on a paperback cover. Sparks' novel reads like a treatment for a much longer work, with the juicy details to be filled in later; strangely, Bekah Brunstetter's book does nothing to sharpen the characters' profiles; if anything, she dilutes them further, doing very little to emphasize Allie's artistic aspirations and eliminating the passage about Noah's years up north, working in a scrap yard and sleeping with a New Jersey waitress. Smoothly attractive, nicely behaved, and stripped of the tiniest idiosyncrasies, they are, especially in their younger incarnations, a pliable set of live-action figures designed to bend with the plot.

To account for the passage of time, the lovers' roles are triple-cast, a strategy that, in this case, makes them seem like three distantly related couples rather than two characters evolving through the years. In the adolescent slot, John Cardoza and Jordan Tyson are sweet but instantly forgettable ingenues. The middle pair fare rather better, in part because Ryan Vasquez is a lanky charmer with a bone-dry sense of humor, and Joy Woods has a hidden supply of electricity to charge up when the occasion demands. (They also have the score's two best numbers: "Leave the Light On," in which Noah, alone at home, wonders if Allie is ever coming back, and "My Days," in which Allie, having arrived at the now-or-never moment, suddenly realizes that life is filled with possibilities. Vasquez, a classic musical theatre leading man, and Woods, who scored earlier in the season as a predatory Broadway star in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, may make The Notebook worth checking out you if enjoy getting a look at tomorrow's stars today.

Almost inevitably, the longest shadows are cast by the older Allie and Noah, in part because they have a realistic situation to work with, and because they are played by first-class professionals. Dorian Harewood's Noah, stumbling around with a bum knee from a shrapnel wound and, later, weakened by a stroke, is a genuinely touching portrait of enduring devotion. Maryann Plunkett's Allie, tentatively plunking a few long-forgotten piano notes, bursting into sudden rages, or, fearfully accepting a bouquet of lilacs from the granddaughter she doesn't recognize, is a truthful portrayal that cuts through the show's layers of artifice.

But artifice is the key word here: The Notebook has been so smoothly engineered that it's hard to care about these attractive ciphers and their manufactured romantic troubles. Ingrid Michaelson's score is an unbroken stream of easy-listening ballads, all written in the same style; her lyrics have a plainspoken quality, rather like prose set to music; some leavening wit would be welcome. But earnestness hangs over the action like so much Spanish moss; even the few jokes have a decorous, aren't-we-naughty quality.

The directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams steer their ship into harbor without causing a ripple of discomfort, which, I suppose, is what was wanted. David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis' scenic design moves effortlessly through various locations, providing just enough detail and no more. Lucy Mackinnon's projections provide some attractive backdrops. The LED tubes that lighting designer Ben Stanton has installed overhead are an eccentric touch but, in other respects his work is graceful. Paloma Young's costumes solidly suggest each time frame. Nevin Steinberg's sound design has an ideal transparency. Among the supporting cast, Andréa Burns delivers a strong double turn as the tough-love specialist on the nursing staff and as Allie's meddling mother, who, to my mind, would benefit from a good slap. I also liked Carson Stewart as a physical therapist who gets a little too caught up in Allie and Noah's story.

The production's oversupply of good taste masks a deeper flaw, namely the flagrant use of dementia, a tortuous affliction, as a sentimental plot device. Harewood and Plunkett do good, honest work; forcing them into a finale designed to prove that love is stronger than medical science borders on the offensive. The Notebook might be just the thing for theatregoers looking for a good cry; others might be too distracted by the manipulating hands of its creators. --David Barbour