They’re Playing Our Song

They’re Playing Our Song represents (though how accurately it’s hard to say) the real-life working and personal relationship between the musical’s real-life composer and lyricist, fictionalised as Vernon and Sonia respectively.  It’s a tale that is character-based rather than plot-driven, and as such depends very much for its entertainment value on physical cues to the relationship’s effect on both protagonists.

I’m glad to be able to report that the actors playing Vernon and Sonia on this year’s tour of the show, Scott Irwin (Beauty and the Beast, Hairspray, A Sign of the Times, Cho Cho San) and Teagan Wouters (The Jersey Boys, Disney’s High School Musical, Legally Blonde the Musical, The Addams Family Musical), portrayed the pair’s halting, difficult, but understandable and ultimately warm relationship not only with conviction but also with the light-hearted touch that the story and the songs required.

It’s a delight to see the stage-musical form suit so well the story it tells, and a rarer joy to hear its songs sung so accurately, making melody, harmony, and rhythm a relaxing pleasure to the ear, uncompromised by the tension of awaiting poor harmonies or, worse, wrong notes.  If one song’s soundtrack accompaniment resumed a bassline a bar or two too soon, if another song’s piano accompaniment anticipated just a tad in response to some syncopated singing, it was too minor to spoil the absolute pleasure of original music well-written, well-arranged, and beautifully played and sung.

The one, gorgeously constructed if simple, set—which, with minor adjustments, served as half a dozen New York City and Californian locations, including the interior of a motor vehicle—was spectacularly lit by Jason Bovaird, and the all-important sound, though it stamped a certain reediness upon the tone of the female lead, was otherwise perfect in volume, balance, and its conveyance of great diction.  (This is evidently one of the benefits of touring with your own sound person: you can choose somebody who hasn’t already sent himself deaf.)  Costuming was outstanding, and even the couple’s dancing was a pleasure to watch.

This musical’s light-hearted approach to a serious relationship wasn’t all froth and bubbles.  It contains at times surprising emotional depth as well as a generous serving of music good enough to have anybody tapping along to and sophisticated enough to retain any musician’s interest, to lyrics universal enough to bring a tear to your eye.

That so few under the age of 40 were present at the performance I attended marks no lack of universal appeal in the show but merely a regrettable failure to expose our younger potential audience members to the magic of theatre and to music whose appeal depends not on its volume but on its inherent richness.

John P. Harvey

Image: Scott Irwin and Teagan Wouters, in They're Playing Our Song. Photographer: Tannaz Allaway.