We Have Always Lived in the Castle
cast list
Richard Todd Adams, Heather Ayers, Bill Buell, Joy Franz, Jenn Gambatese, Carly Hughes, Beth McVey, Ryan Murphy, Sean Palmer, William Parry, Matt Pearson, Alexandra Socha
directed by
Anne Kauffman
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"See how this house is pretty?" sings young Merricat Blackwood in the opening moments of the new musical We Have Always Lived in the Castle, based on the Anne Jackson novel of the same name. Strangely enough, this opening lyric is prescient of what's to come. With thrilling scenic design by David Zinn, there's much to admire about the production of We Have Always Lived, but something beyond that is lacking - not substance, per se, but structure. It's as if the pretty house were all facade - a beautiful front with a jumble of clutter inside.
The musical, with book (and some lyrics) by Adam Bock and music and lyrics by Todd Almond, tells a grisly story with many interesting dimensions. Our protagonist is eighteen-year-old Merricat Blackwood (the fantastic Alexandra Socha), one of the last in a long line of Blackwoods, along with her sister Constance (Jenn Gambatese), and their uncle Julian Blackwood. The three of them are the only survivors of a terrible accident (or was it an accident) involving poison in the household sugar bowl.
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Who's to blame for the accident and how the Blackwoods will survive in its wake are at the forefront of this cerebral, complex musical (it's already years after the accident with the musical begins and still the aftershocks can be felt in their daily life). As with many stories about lonely people, it's the arrival of a newcomer (in this case Merricat and Constance's cousin Charles) that stirs things up.
Charles, who's taken by Constance's beauty, soon wants to move in and take control - preferring to ship Julian, who's confined to a wheelchair, off to a hospital, and Merricat off to boarding school. Eventually, tensions build between Merricat and Charles, culminating in more and more dastardly repercussions (and some of the more musically thrilling moments of the show). It's occasionally thrilling to watch these two go at it. Unfortunately, the musical that surrounds their struggle is somewhat less interesting than it should be.
In the first place, though some of the songs here (especially The Stomp and She Didn't Get Very Far) are charming or listenable, none of them particularly further the plot. Rather, the show seems to stop to accommodate its musical passages, which are well-sung by a cast of fine singers and possess occasionally beautiful melodies as composed by Todd Almond, who clearly has a compositional knack.
It's not a story, however, that especially cries out for musicalization. Though one can easily see Charles bursting onto the scene with a song in his heart (it's telling that the aforementioned standout songs involved him), our lonely protagonists seem most at ease with spoken word or incantation (there are some lovely musical sequences involving the now-dead Blackwoods).
In the end, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is neither a complete failure nor an assured success, falls somewhere in between. Mixing the lonely capers of the Edies of Grey Gardens with the musical sensibility of Sondheim and Next to Normal, Almond and Bock find none of the success of these examples mostly due to their central failing - the lack of a meaty central story.
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New York reviews
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Three Sisters, Classic Stage Company
The Piano Lesson, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Momentum, Laurie Beechman Theatre
The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, La MaMa E.T.C.
John Gabriel Borkman, BAM Harvey Theater
Blood From a Stone, Acorn Theatre
Malfi, Inc., Theatre 54
Pieces, 59E59 Theaters
A Delicate Balance, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Memorandum, Beckett Theatre
The Scottsboro Boys, Lyceum Theatre
Driving Miss Daisy, Golden Theatre
Futura, TBG Theatre
La Bete, The Music Box Theatre
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
A Life in the Theatre, Schoenfeld Theatre
In Transit, 59E59 Theaters
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