Review: ‘Stereophonic’ Makes Some Very Sweet Music, Indeed
You know a piece of theater has done something right when, many days later, it is still provoking pin-pricks of intrigue, revelation, and mystery in one’s mind. And so it is with Stereophonic (Playwrights Horizons, to Nov. 26)—one of the most original, stunningly designed, and technically dazzling plays in New York right now. Stereophonic is a must-experience, rather than simply a must-see.
This isn’t to say Daniel Adjmi’s play will be for everyone. It is very long, at over three hours, and its script and focus ranges all over the place. People talk over one another, they lounge around, there is a lot of chatter intelligible only to those musos or lovers and friends of musos who spend large amounts of time in recording studios. And yet, once and if you ease into its singular, almost fly-on-the-wall dramatic world, you’re mesmerized.
This play with music (and oh, what wonderful music by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire) follows a seventies rock band—with pronounced echoes of Fleetwood Mac, although director Daniel Aukin maintained it was not specifically about any one band in a recent interview with The New York Times—as they work on an album between July 1976 and June 1977. The first three acts are set in a recording studio in Sausalito, CA, the final act in a recording studio in Los Angeles as the band sing, record, fight, have technical screw-ups, emotional blow-ups (and pass around a bag of cocaine).