Theatre in Review: Lifeline (Pershing Square Signature Center)

	Kristy MacLaren. Photo: Andrew Patino

The program and signage for Lifeline call it "the Scottish sell-out musical," but I'm sure they don't mean it like it sounds; indeed, given its staunchly crusading spirit, it is the opposite of a frank commercial venture. And yet something about this apparent Freudian slip is oddly revealing: Possessed of a sweeping historical perspective and bent on rousing the audience to face one of the most critical issues of our time, Lifeline is an overloaded and stylistically inconsistent piece of work. It doesn't just want to be a musical; it wants to be all of them.

Lifeline features two narratives, unfolding decades apart and threaded together like a DNA strand. First up is Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, warning the world that promiscuous dissemination of the drug could destroy its effectiveness. (He is appalled when reporters query if he would "support the mass production of penicillin lipstick," an idea that, even now, makes one shudder.) His dire warnings about the rise of treatment-resistant bacteria hang over the second plot, set in the present day, when Aaron, a young Scottish musician diagnosed with cancer, has an operation to remove part of his colon. It's a serious procedure, but not life-threatening until, picking up an infection in the hospital, he enters into an irreversible decline.

It's an ambitious dramatic concept, contrasting Fleming's campaign to sensibly educate the world about the careful use of wonder drugs with the efforts of Jess, a young physician, at saving Aaron (her lifelong friend, for whom she carries a torch) and, later, urging a rational government policy on antibiotics. But Becky Hope-Palmer's book is a jumble, hopping between two centuries with such abandon that neither story gets the attention it deserves. The Fleming plot is the messier of the two, introducing him at the end of his career, then wasting valuable time on his late-in-life second marriage to his colleague Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas (a dead end, story-wise), before leaping back to his World War I career, when he struggles to keep wounded soldiers alive with useless, army-approved antiseptics. As if it weren't cluttered enough, Lifeline sometimes goes all Bertolt Brecht on us, introducing a Greek chorus of real-life medical workers telling present-day horror stories of patients with untreatable infections.

It's not at all clear why anyone thought this fact-based scientific drama needed to be a musical but, with considerable innovation, it might be made to work. But Lifeline can never settle on its stylistic loyalties, embracing as it does standard tropes from many theatrical eras: a lilting, operetta-style waltz; a hearty soldiers' drinking song; a dance sequence featuring "dream" versions of Aaron and Jess; and a scream-your-head-off eleven o'clock number in the approved modern manner. Except for the latter, these are used seemingly to provide a little color to the otherwise grim proceedings; they are largely irrelevant to the drama at hand.

The nervous, unfocused first act is burdened with predictability; the audience realizes Aaron is a goner long before his doctors concur, allowing everyone onstage to harp on the theme of overprescription. After intermission, however, Lifeline acquires some power, not incidentally because it stops to catch its breath, focusing on the human toll. This is seen in a trio of affecting songs. In "I've Done All That I Can," Julian, a young political operative, lays bare his fury and impotence over the global conditions that facilitate the rampant use of antibiotics. In "Dry Your Eyes," Layla, Aaron's recently widowed mother (Mari McGinlay in the show's best performance), heartbreakingly clings to her natural optimism in the face of terrible loss. The climactic "The Best of Us" is a tad overwrought but at least it brings Fleming and Jess together, uniting the two narrative threads in a striking climax. An epilogue, featuring the chorus members describing their day jobs, provides a much-needed inspirational closing. (Each week of the musical's limited run will feature a dozen medics and researchers participating in certain numbers. This must be an enormous amount of work and it testifies to the project's undeniable earnestness and sense of mission.)

The director (and co-creator) Alex Howarth does his best to wrangle these unwieldy elements but he can't shore up the scattered first act; he and choreographer Wayne Parsons also struggle with standard musical theatre items that have no place in this double-barreled tale of escalating tragedies. (Songwriter Robin Hiley shows his talent when focusing on the characters, less so when spinning out cliched items like "Waltz with Me," which you could slip into any Sherman Brothers production without anyone being the wiser.) One assumes Howarth also signed on the set design, by Alice McNicholas, a sleek abstract space with a circular, revolving stage; it works well enough except for the bulky hospital bed that must be awkwardly and repeatedly hauled on and offstage. (McNicholas also designed the costumes, which, not unreasonably, are heavy on lab coats and surgical scrubs.)

Still, the director does solid work with his cast, especially Kristy MacLaren and Scott McClure, as Jess and Aaron, forever teetering on the edge of romance even as the clock runs out. MacLaren also evolves believably into a fierce crusader as Jess fights to make something meaningful from Aaron's untimely death. (One sometimes wonders why she doesn't get on the horn to a reporter at, say, The Guardian, which regularly traffics in medical and climate-related scandals.) Robbie Scott does much to humanize Julian, initially characterized as a slick careerist interested only in a plush perch at Whitehall. Nicole Raquel Dennis makes the most of her brief appearance in the thankless role of Amalia; it would be nice to see her in a more challenging assignment. Fleming is depicted as a kind of living waxworks figure, but at least Matthew Malthouse gives him some stature, especially when musing about the crowds who "flock to see/This penicillin myth I have come to be." Among the other design credits, Will Monks' lighting is often unpleasantly bright and in one's face, although his projections are rather better. Paul Smith's sound design keeps the action intelligible, a challenge with an onstage band plus sequences that sometimes spill into the audience.

Lifeline is so totally on the side of the angels that it is no fun to point out how often it stumbles, especially in the first act. (Interestingly, the production's sponsors include GSK and Merck. One doesn't often think of Big Pharma as naturally altruistic, but I suppose these companies have product lines to protect.) The show delivers enough powerful moments to give one a tantalizing sense of what it might be. As it is, however, two questions still need answering: Why is Lifeline a musical? And what kind of musical should it be? --David Barbour