Theatre in Review: Stereophonic (Golden Theatre)

	Photo: Julieta Cervantes

The good news is thatStereophonic has transferred to Broadway from Playwrights Horizons with all its gorgeously discordant notes intact. David Adjmi's drama, about a band very much like Fleetwood Mac, working on an album very much like Rumours, offers a deep immersion in the making of art and the havoc it can wreak. It's also an irresistible comedy of 1970s manners -- sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll division. If it has a moral, it is this: Beware producers bearing largesse. When the group's previous album makes a surprise return to the Top 40, Columbia Records triples the new project's budget, setting the stage for a year-long creative purgatory, during which three marriages will unravel, one character will struggle mightily with addiction, and friendships will be irretrievably altered. Meanwhile, some stunning music gets made. Is it worth the agita? You decide.

Daniel Aukin's directorial hand is so light-handed, the action so casual, that you might not immediately notice the ground shifting beneath Adjmi's characters. (A friend who attended with me compared the playwright's method to that of a Robert Altman film, with overlapping dialogue, simultaneous conversations, and seemingly minor incidents that, in retrospect, can be seen as evidence of profound transformations.) The actors inhabit their roles to stunningly naturalistic effect: Will Brill, one of our most skilled character men, is amusing and poignant as Reg, the British bassist, often seen toting the biggest bag of cocaine imaginable and expounding, through a Jack Daniels fog, his impenetrable ideas about life and spirituality. Juliana Canfield sparks each of her scenes as Holly, the keyboard player and Reg's fed-up spouse; endlessly spiky, she is as ready to pitch a fit as any of her bandmates but watch her expression when she recognizes the falseness of an intimate friend. As Simon, the drummer, Chris Stack's laid-back manner masks a quiet fury that he ever merged his Brit trio with an American duo, even if meant breakout success.

Representing the Yank contingent: Tom Pecinka is a master of the pregnant pause as Peter, the demanding, damaged lead singer. (Nothing distracts him from work, not even the fact that his brother, an Olympic swimmer, is, at the moment, competing in Montréal. "He's good, but I think he's a little overpraised," Peter says, adding of swimming, "I don't actually think it's a sport.") For all his controlling ways, he can't stop his wife, Diana, from emerging as the band's leading creative force. (In one of the play's funniest scenes, Peter, Diana, and Holly patch in some backup vocals, their oohs and aahs interrupted with savagely vitriolic exchanges.) Sarah Pidgeon is first-rate as self-doubting Diana ("I can't be a rock star and be this stupid"), who proves to be the most sharp-elbowed of the bunch. Riding herd on this crowd is Eli Gelb as Grover, the sound engineer, who has lied his way into the job, aided by Andrew R. Butler as Charlie, his bizarre, yarn-spinning assistant.

In a way, the most dominant character is David Zinn's scenic design, an all-enveloping Sausalito recording studio built on two levels: a mixing room dominated by an expansive, old-school console, and a glassed-in recording room. It's the perfect hothouse setting for the musical and emotional clashes that drive the play. The other design elements mesh perfectly in this environment: Enver Chakartash provides a thrift shop's worth of bell-bottom jeans, mesh shirts, peasant dresses, and boots. Jiyoun Chang's lighting accurately notes the time of day even in this hermetically sealed environment. Ryan Rumery's sound design creates markedly different atmospheres in the control and sound rooms.

As the recording sessions drag on ad infinitum, furies are unleashed: A tiny reverb problem with Simon's snares sends him hurtling out of the room. An attempt at patching in one of Diana's high notes exposes Peter's most sadistic tendencies. Meanwhile, everyone struggles with overnight success. ("We're famous," Diana tells Holly. "I went to the gynecologist on Saturday. And I had my legs in the stirrups, and he asked me for an autograph.") Stereophonic is clear-eyed about the emotional costs involved but it never loses sight of the fact that, for all their conflicts and self-defeating activities, these are real artists; what makes them so volatile in real life are the same things that calls up magic in the studio. Both a poignant character study and a needle-sharp comedy, it is a peerless study of the creative process; the product of a singular vision, it represents Adjmi's best work to date.--David Barbour