Drew Fornarola
The Composer Lyricist Cabaret
Festival of New American Theatre
Phoenix Theatre Company, Phoenix, AZ, May 14, 2022
Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards
Drew Fornarola’s newest rock musical Tiananmen follows the story of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. It is slated to have its fully staged world premiere at The Phoenix Theatre Company in April 2023. For that reason, he was invited to be one of two composers featured in this year’s Festival of New American Theatre. The Composer Lyricist Cabaret has become an annual highlight of the festival and is held on the festival’s second weekend. This year’s other composer, Craig Bohmler, shared the stage, and his cabaret featured two of the seven lyricists with whom he has collaborated.
Fornarola is both a composer and a lyricist and hails from New York City. He garnered a big laugh with a quote from Cole Porter (addressed to Richard Rodgers): “it took two of you?” Fornarola wrote his first musical while he was a political-science major at Princeton University, and he is not formally trained in music or theater. That has not stopped him from writing for DreamWorks Studios for five years or from having his plays, musicals, and film scores find a wide audience. Andy Chin handled the accompaniment duties, allowing Fornarola to play host. He was joined by four talented singers—Tucker Abney, Aaron Ford, Amanda Glenn, and Sara Sanderson. The cabaret kicked off with “Love Theme from College the Musical,” which he wrote as a 19-year-old. He noted that it takes a view on long-term relationships, of which he knew absolutely nothing at the time. Not afraid to talk about both his successes and failures, he bombed with Vote for Me, a show he wrote for producer Robyn Goodman, who produced Avenue Q. We heard “The Voting Song,” skillfully sung by Glenn, which was clever but preachy. He found success with his show Claudio Quest, based on a 1980s video game, which led to his gig with DreamWorks.
Glenn and Sanderson were wonderful on “More Than One Way to Be a Princess,” as were Sanderson and Ford on “Where Did We Go Wrong” as the parents of Tillie the Trickster, a show Fornarola had written with book writer Jeremy Dobrish and SNL’s Molly Shannon. Sanderson has a clear, strong voice and a comic flair that makes her a favorite to watch. If she hasn’t played Glinda in Wicked yet, she should.
The cast offered a few bars of “1 Night in San Diego,” the title song from a film currently streaming on Hulu. Fornarola introduced it by saying. “sometimes I write for the money!” He deemed it too racy for the PTC cabaret—hence the shortened offering we received. In keeping with his chronological story, he included a scene from his play Straight, which found success off-Broadway and has been produced around the world. It did not work for a cabaret; the intimacy of the script and characters were lost by Ford and Abney in the brief out-of-context setting.
Fornarola chose to sing “We Are Strong” himself, which proved challenging for his range. The lyrics for the song were written by Alex and Jaden, two 14-year-olds who were part of a residency at Parkland High to help students process the trauma of the mass shooting there. It will be part of an HBO Documentary.
Two of the eight musical slots were reserved for songs from Tiananmen. Glenn delivered a poignant and intense “Disloyal Daughter” about a young protestor writing to her parents. The entire company closed with “We Are Tomorrow,” the moral of the story of the protests that did little to change China but may be changing former-USSR satellite countries such as Ukraine.
PTC has had success giving birth to new American musicals and has recently doubled down with its commitment to expand the Hormel Theatre from a 250- to 500-seat space that incorporates technical upgrades specifically designed to accommodate pre-Broadway tryouts. Thanks to the vision of Producing Artistic Director Michael Barnard and local producers, including Jason Rose (producer of Americano currently running off-Broadway and the producer of Tiananmen), Arizona is now becoming more of an arts leader every year. This was Fornarola’s first trip here but it will not be his last.
