Justin Witwick
Directing Chaos
The Green Room 42, NYC, January 3, 2025
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg
Justin Witwick is a young pianist and music director who came up with an intriguing idea for a cabaret/theater evening to present at The Green Room 42. He gathered a group of talented young performers to appear as attendees at a musical-theater summer camp where he was putting on a show. The twist was that these weren’t just some youthful ambitious kids with a dream; they were the characters from a group of mostly contemporary musicals. So, Quasimodo and Shrek were frenemies, Doctor Jekyll had been diagnosed as bipolar, and Glinda and Queenie (from The Wild Party) fought to be his star.
Some of the fun came from assigning material to the characters from unrelated musicals. For instance, the terrific Kanedi Chriske (imagine a young Mary Testa) played the role of Trina, the unhappy wife of a gay man (Marvin) in Falsettos. On her first appearance, she offered a powerful rendition of “Breaking Down” (William Finn), Trina’s show-off solo. She later returned, still not over Marvin, to tear the room apart with Stephen Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind.” It was smart to link these two troubled women. On a lighter note, Amelie, the charming Kat Scherer, first soloed with her own song, “Times Are Hard for Dreamers” (Daniel Messe & Nathan Tysen), then changed the direction of her life when she decided to “Fly Into the Future” (David Kirshenbaum), a rare number from the musical version of Vanities, A New Musical. These choices were certainly the most imaginative in the program.
Unfortunately, much of the show was given to material we have seen too often. For instance, to have Glinda (Mara Campolattaro) and Elphaba (Emily O’Leary) singing “What Is the Feeling?” (Stephen Schwartz) was a rather tired choice, no matter how pleasant the singers were. On the other hand, having Elphaba perform “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” (Brian Yorkey & Tom Kitt) was smart; she was backed up by mom Trina and brother Gabe (Michael Negro). Cross-gender casting of Evan Hanson (Zoe Ann Ritchie) and Jonathan Larson (Esme Mitchel) had no particular payoff.
The evening might have been improved by including fewer characters and more plot arcs. Bringing the individual stories into focus would have given the audience something to cheer for. There was also an inconsistency in that some performers used full character makeup even as others appeared ready only for a basic rehearsal. The same was true of wardrobe that made the entire performance seem less like a fully realized event and more like a dress rehearsal. Witwick showed a good deal of wit and provided fine work as an accompanist and vocal arranger, but this show needs to go through another revision before it is presented to the public again.
