When the chilling surprise ending to “I & You: The Musical” occurs, you go back and look for clues and wonder how book writer Lauren M. Gunderson and composer Ari Afsar engineered their shock.
The answer is easy.
“I & You: The Musical” is such a wonderful piece, you are too centered on its unfolding to think about its ending, or future.
A future that seems predictable until Gunderson and Afsar land their salvo, one I should have remembered from seeing Gunderson’s play from which the musical is adapted.
Princeton’s McCarter Theatre commissioned this musical of the play, and the results are everything a company can hope for from a world premiere. “I & You” is a lively, engaging, perfectly crafted musical that traces the relationship of a polite, well-spoken high schooler and his critically, possibly terminally, ill, homebound classmate, into whose bedroom he suddenly barges to complete a homework assignment due the next day.
I know. It sounds like a standard boy-meets-girl setup, which it unapologetically is until its effective zinger hits.
But aren’t most plots a version of the person-meets-person paradigm? The difference with “I & You” is it transcends pattern and even the melodramatic revelation that its heroine, Caroline (Jasmine Forsberg), could die, by engrossingly zoning in on the quirks and quiddities of two unusual teens and how they negotiate this tough stage in their life, imminent death being just one more complication.
Gunderson created a pair who have interests and talents beyond those that occupy most teens. Asfar deftly translates much of what they say and feel in song, her music having an upbeat, often confessional tone, her lyrics remaining refreshingly interesting whether they declaratively provide information or probe into the psyches and emotions of the protagonists. Their book and music are present with the bright immediacy expected from a Sarah Rasmussen production.
Rasmussen likes to keep stages full with non-stop action, and this piece with two mentally active characters who have stories worth hearing, lonely lives that lead to arcane pursuits in art, literature, and other fields, and a budding romance between likable misfits suits her style to a tee.
“I & You’s” 90 minutes sail by imperceptibly because so much is happening on the stage, yet without theatrical clutter or confusion. You want to follow Caroline and the gentlemanly Anthony (Benji Santiago) and learn more about them, their enhanced perception of life, and Walt Whitman, the subject of their assignment.
Scenes swirl with ideas and revelations that interlock neatly and keep you riveted to the next thing Caroline or Anthony will say or do. Clarity prevails amid a barrage of thought and information. The result is a musical that delights as a romance while offering much to mull and consider once the show ends.
Set designer Beowulf Boritt contributes with a set that is almost as occupying as the production and expresses a lot about Caroline, her gifts, and her life of general confinement in one room. Rasmussen defies the expected boundary of the stage by having Anthony appear to leave Caroline’s room and float on (or bounce off of) air for one successful effect that resonates with more depth once you know “I & You’s” ending. She has lighting designer Japhy Weideman and projection designer Stefania Bulbarella conspire to create astronomical images, rainbows, and visuals that illustrate the teens’ thoughts or Whitman’s words that soar beyond the dormer roof and through the windows of Caroline’s room. The McCarter stage is constantly awash in things to catch the eye and trigger the imagination but which never impinge on or break your concentration from the evolving story at hand.
McCarter’s “I & You” seems to incorporate all theater can offer. The piece, so much about mortality, is bound to find life beyond Princeton. The hope is that audiences on Broadway or wherever it lands see a production as complete, fulfilling, eye-catching, and moving as that assembled by Rasmussen, her designers, movement director Steph Paul, and the symbiotic acting team of Jasmine Forsberg and Benji Santiago.
Forsberg and Santiago are the only two characters, populating a world in Caroline’s bedroom advanced by the decorations Caroline paints and arranges, the dazzling images Bulbarella and Weideman provide, the scope of Anthony’s interests, and the deft inclusion of Walt Whitman and his compositions.
“I & You: The Musical” gets its title from a passage in Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” in which he describes how people intersect yet remain separate and individual. This, and other Whitman lines — “I sing the body electric,” “I contain multitudes” — inform Gunderson and Asfar’s work, which puts Whitman’s separate-together philosophy on stage in a sharp, entertaining way.
So much contributes to the exhilarating success of Rasmussen’s production.
Boritt, Bulbarella, and Weideman give us much to see, Rasmussen and Paul movement that is non-stop yet comfortable, and Elizabeth Weidner subtle and interrupting — that fire alarm battery! — sound to hear, but the pair who make it all work are the sensational Forsberg and Santiago.
Santiago should be on any director or choreographer’s list for leading actors from now, when he is young and can easily play a teenager, until he graduates to parts originated by the aged Joel Grey.
Santiago’s performance is seamless. His sweet, true, perfectly pitched voice seems to come effortlessly from nowhere. He can bounce perceptibly from one emotion or expression to the next while making both register clearly. He dances as effortlessly as he sings. Best of all, he spontaneously conveys moods, ideas, thoughts, and attitudes with the skill of the master at that craft, Shirley MacLaine.
With all of that talent and ability, perhaps the best of Santiago’s traits is his uncanny knack for seeming ordinary. He always keeps Anthony a typical kid, respectful and challenging at the same time, full of knowledge he’s gleaned but modest and nonchalant about imparting all he knows, excited by the discovery of Whitman and unafraid to express it while never going overboard.
Santiago makes Anthony immediately likable and keeps him that way even when he makes faux pas by lapsing into unwitting yet excusable insensitivity on topics Caroline knows more about, such as being sick, dependent on medicine, and subject to sudden fits of drowsiness or pain.
Forsberg can match Santiago step by step, beat by beat, and emotion by emotion. Their performances are in sync, Forsberg and Santiago seem less like characters and more like people communing in real life, a fairly miraculous feat considering so much theatrical is going on around them every second.
Forsberg begins as a feisty Caroline, unexpectedly strong and lithe for someone who has just sung about the tenuousness of her existence and how she copes with it.
Caroline is a rebel, a young woman who has contended with so much and learned a lot about life, impending death, the loyalty of friends once one depends on the visiting your sickroom or remembering to call, it makes her bitter and brutally honest.
She resists Anthony’s well-meaning overtures at first. She is suspicious about him coming to her room with the imminent homework assignment. She wonders how he got past her mother, who is charged with keeping company from invading Caroline’s sanctum.
Caroline’s resistance makes it harder for us to warm up to her, even knowing her condition. Forsberg sacrifices some of the likability Santiago’s Anthony earns naturally. It is a credit to see her move from wary and combative to trusting and compatible, even smitten.
Providing a lot to see, a lot to hear, and a lot to think about, “I & You: The Musical” sets a high bar for the new theater season.
Beowulf Boritt’s set, as mentioned, is a wonderful in itself. It’s a simple A-frame dormer construction that is filled with drawings, decorations, etchings, etc., Caroline has done. If Boritt’s creativity is a reflection of Caroline’s, it’s a testament to what the world might lose if Caroline does not get the liver transplant she needs to live.
Kara Harmon’s costumes are appropriately simple for Anthony, who remains in his school uniform, and wittily fanciful for the creative Caroline.
I & You: The Musical, Berlind Theatre at McCarter, 91 University Place, Princeton. Through Sunday, October 12. Wednesday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; and Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 2 p.m. $36 to $111. www.mccarter.org or 609-258-2787.
