“The Connector” is pitch excellent relating to {a magazine}’s workplace politics, and it’s means off key on the a lot larger image of faux information. Jonathan Marc Sherman and Jason Robert Brown’s conflicted new musical had its world premiere Tuesday on the MCC Theater.
First, the excellent news — of which I do know one thing about, having spent over 40 years as an editor and reporter at numerous magazines and newspapers. Most of them are defunct now, however that’s one other story. Few, if any, of these periodicals I labored for had been fairly as illustrious as The Connector — which, by the way in which, is a horrible title for {a magazine}, to not point out a musical. There are revered and dusty shades of the New Yorker’s William Shawn within the editor-in-chief performed by Scott Bakula, who’s given no much less prestigious a moniker than Conrad.
Conrad is an editor worshipped by his readers and his employees, which embrace a younger copy editor, Robin (Hannah Cruz) and a brand new employees author, Ethan (Ben Levi Ross), recent from the Ivy League. She is a struggling author, and he has already been blessed as an distinctive author by the all-mighty Conrad, due to an article Ethan wrote for his faculty newspaper.
A extra revealing title for this 100-minute musical can be “Learn how to Cope With Workplace Angst Beneath the Age of 30,” as a result of that’s what Robin suffers as her articles maintain being rejected for publication and Ethan’s maintain discovering their means into the journal’s effectively, the place they miraculously increase circulation. Including to her fury is that Conrad, wanting to play mentor, sees himself within the younger male wunderkind.
Bakula performs the éminence grise with restraint and with out ever turning pompous, which these sorts of high editors usually are. However “The Connector” is admittedly Ross’ present, and it’s his efficiency and his phenomenal vocals that drive it. His scrappy Ethan is the Sammy Glick of publishing, and “The Connector” stays on observe when it focuses on the tantalizing topic of what occurs when younger ambition wedded to actual expertise run fully off the tracks.
The place the musical begins to muddy up the workplace politics is when Robin states what might or is probably not true: Her failure is all about sexism, regardless that this function might simply be performed by a male actor, with solely the change of some pronouns. I needed to roll my eyes when Robin lastly will get an article printed at one other journal and its title is “Learn how to Get Out of Texas: Backwards, in Excessive Heels.” That is exactly the sort of human curiosity story that editors have at all times assigned to ladies, particularly should you put the phrases “excessive heels” within the headline. Robin delivers the excellent news of her first printed article with no smidgeon of irony.
Taking part in the put-upon and under-appreciated copy editor with one byline to her title, Cruz is given nothing however discordant music to sing and rapidly emerges as one thing of a capsule, regardless of being the musical’s main whistleblower.
She complains about all of the corrupt and privileged “white males” round her. A fast fact-check, nevertheless, exhibits that two of the latest high-profile instances of actual fabrication and/or plagiarism concerned writers who weren’t white males: Jason Blair of The New York Occasions and Sabrina Rubin Erdely of Rolling Stone.
“The Connector” is clearly based mostly on Stephen Glass’ collection of made-up articles on the New Republic within the Nineties — the musical is about in that decade — however that scandal was preceded by The Washington Publish’s Janet Cooke, who returned the Pulitzer Prize after it got here to mild that her profile of an eight-year-old heroin addict was bogus.
In a current New York Occasions interview with the creators of “The Connector,” director Daisy Prince factors out, “It’s a bunch of girls who convey [Ethan] down.”
It has turn out to be a cliché of latest American musicals in charge each sick of Western civilization on straight white males. Whereas the Glass case is talked about within the Occasions interview, conveniently not introduced up are the names Erdely and Cooke.
Since it’s “a bunch of girls” that exposes Ethan’s fabricated articles, it’s odd that on this musical, the Robin character comes off extra jealous and resentful than ingenious and proficient. The second feminine whistleblower in “The Connector” is a reader (Mylinda Hull) who writes a collection of letters to the editor complaining about factual errors within the journal. She is a recurring leitmotif named Mona Bland, which sums up her impact on the musical.
There’s additionally a devoted copy editor, Muriel (Jessica Molaskey), who wields a purple pencil and sings that, in addition to being a stickler for the information, she marched with Martin Luther King Jr.. How are we alleged to interpret this late-in-the-musical character revelation? Does Muriel’s help of civil rights imply that truth-tellers possess a social conscience {and professional} fabulists like Ethan vote Republican?
Which ends up in a far larger false impression being promoted right here. I’ve written the next phrases so usually in my theater critiques, most not too long ago with regard to Lynn Nottage’s guide for “MJ” and Rebekah Greer Melocik’s guide for “Learn how to Dance in Ohio,” however right here I am going once more: The cultural left hates the press each bit as a lot because the political proper on this nation. “The Connector” blames the general public’s distrust in journalism on awful reporters, regardless that fabrication on the extent of Ethan’s (or Blair’s or Erdely’s or Glass’) is extraordinarily uncommon.
What’s behind the present fixation on faux information goes again to the ethos and ways of a Roy Cohn whose mantra was “deny, deny, deny” and “by no means apologize” and “should you repeat it usually sufficient, individuals consider it.” In different phrases, it stems from individuals like Cohn’s greatest pupil, Donald Trump, and wackos who don’t even trouble to make use of the spell verify on their computer systems to disseminate no matter they fantasize about on the web. Within the Occasions interview, Brown mentions Kellyanne Conway’s notorious “alternate information” comment. Whats up! Conway isn’t a reporter.
A number of of Brown’s songs convey to life the articles that Ethan fabricates, and whereas the jagged, jazzy music grabs the ear — one quasi rap quantity, sung by Fergie Philippe, actually perks up the present — the at all times intelligent and complex lyrics don’t illuminate how these tales had been concocted.
It could possibly be mentioned that that is a kind of terrific Brown scores, like “Honeymoon in Vegas” or “Mr. Saturday Night time,” that’s subverted by an inferior or problematic guide. Sadly, it’s his lyrics, greater than Sherman’s guide, that hyperlink at this time’s “faux information” mantra to the uncommon prevalence of dishonest journalists writing for established periodicals. In the long run, “The Connector” is as reactionary as a right-wing politician who finds a typo in a Occasions or WaPo article and cries, “You’ll be able to’t consider something they print!”
Prince’s route is breathtakingly fluid on Beowulf Boritt’s starkly trendy set; the motion strikes throughout quite a lot of locales with nice financial system and nearly no furnishings. Finally that alacrity hits pace bumps as the fabric turns portentous, and Karla Puno Garcia’s choreography, with its dreary Martha Graham contractions, by no means fails so as to add kilos of pretentiousness to the more and more heavy load.
