A new Broadway musical about people in love? OK. A new Broadway musical about people in love who are robots? I don’t think so. That’s what I feared when I arrived with trepidation at the Belasco Theatre to see Maybe Happy Ending and stayed to be totally overwhelmed by the best, most beautiful, innovational and original musical I’ve seen in what feels like eons. To quote Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics to “I Could Have Danced All Night” in My Fair Lady:
I’ll never know what made it so exciting
Why all at once my heart took flight…
But I am in love with Maybe Happy Ending. If you care about enchantment I think you will be, too.
Darren Criss, the dynamic and self-assured young actor who exploded on the television scene as the sexually confused killer in the TV mini-series The Assassination of Gianni Versace and won an Emmy, Golden Globe, Critic’s Choice and SAG award for it, makes a triumphant return to the New York stage as Oliver, a handsome Helperbot who has been involuntarily “retired” from active duty and assigned a small but pleasant flat in Korea where he spends his days caring for his only companion, a fading plant, and listening to his favorite jazz records by Duke Ellington and Chet Baker. One day he is startled by a disruptive and unheard-of knock on the door by the neighbor across the hall named Claire (Helen J. Shen, who makes a formidable Broadway debut). Oliver is a Helperbot 3, which means an earlier version with a longer shelf life, while Claire is an improved, updated Helperbot 5, which means she can do more things and impart more knowledge, but her structure fades faster (you know, like new appliances, which, we know from experience, are never as good as the old models). Now Claire’s battery is running down and she needs to borrow Oliver’s battery charger.
They’re wary at first, because neither robot has ever known—much less kissed—another robot, but as Oliver and Claire get to know each other, he teaches her to appreciate the sophistication of jazz, she shares with him her love for fireflies, and they join forces on a journey to reconnect with their original owners because Oliver feels it will help him regain his purpose since that is what he was constructed for. It is Claire who is wiser but leaving the world sooner than she planned. They come equipped with innovative devices such as paper cup phones, hard drives and passwords. But the more human they become, the closer they come to feelings of pain, loss and love. “Everything must end eventually,” sings Claire in one of the score’s most haunting and memorable songs, “living with people has taught this to me.” It is best to say nothing more about the plot. Going through the discovery of what happens next is one of the show’s most heartbreaking take-home rewards. Nothing is what they hoped for, but they find something better in each other. Maybe love will help them survive, without wi-fi.
From this inept outline, I can only tell you how impossible it is to relate the freshness, the joy and the quality that elevate every aspect of this extraordinary work of theatre artistry. While the rapturous music and lyrics by the team of Will Aronson and Hue Park break your heart, the dazzling direction by Michael Arden reaches levels of perfection in staging and the technical marvels in the settings by Dane Laffrey leave you slack-jawed with awe. There is nothing familiar, no “seen it before” feeling to the action sequences that unfold within moveable neon squares that open, narrow or expand, depending on the size and stature of the scene. The unseen orchestra is conducted from a pair of television sets attached to the balcony. And to me, the gorgeous arrangements are a rapture to hear—lush and thrilling and a beatific antidote to the usual noisy rock and roll pandemonium that pollutes so many of today’s juke box musicals.
Best of all, in addition to Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen, the two terrific leads, this show introduces a fellow from Shreveport, Louisiana named Dez Deron making his Broadway debut as a swinging headliner named Gil Brently from the big band era who opens and closes the show with a vocal style that moves the action in stanzas that illustrate the popular music that shaped the era in which the Helperbots lived up to their names and reputations. This musical marvel has got it all. He’s movie-star handsome, he croons like a knockout combination of Vic Damone and Mel Torme, and I can’t wait to hear him headline in a chic supper club or intimate jazz watering hole ASAP. Like everything else in Maybe Happy Ending, he is merely sensational. I love this show and cannot wait to see it again—and often.
Maybe Happy Ending | 1hr. 45 mins. No intermission. | Belasco Theatre | 111 W. 44th St. | (212) 239-6200 | Buy Tickets Here