Live and in person at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto, Ont. Produced by Yonge Street Theatricals. Playing until May 10, 2025.
Book, music, lyrics by Britta Johnson
Directed by Annie Tippe
Choreography by Ann Yee
Music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations by Lynne Shankel
Set by Todd Rosenthal
Costumes by Sarafina Bush
Lighting by Japhy Weideman
Sound by Kai Harara and Haley Parcher
Music director, Chris Kong
Cast: Valeria Ceballos
Jake Epstein
Isabella Esler
Kaylee Harwood
Arinea Hermans
Chilina Kennedy
Zoë O’Connor
Julia Pulo
Mariand Torres
The band:
Chris Chong—music director, conductor, keyboard
Emily Hau-violin
Moira Burke-Viola
Samuel Bisson-Cello
Pat Kilbride-Bass
Sanya Eng-Harp
Jamie Drake-Percussion
Britta Johnson, a gifted composer, lyricist, writer, has written a poignant, moving show on loss, grief, love and moving on. But this iteration is so bloated with Broadway-style glitz, glitter and overkill, it’s hard to see what was so affecting in its early iterations.
The Story. It’s Alice’s 16th birthday. She has just had a fight with her often-absent father, Frank, a self-help-inspirational-speaker-author. He has unexpectedly come home from a conference he’s organized in Winnipeg, to celebrate Alice’s birthday as a surprise. Alice is surprised alright and angry. She has plans. He wants her to change them. She can’t. She wants him to change his 8:00 p.m. flight. He won’t. They end on bad terms. Alice will regret that bad parting for the rest of the show. So will Alice’s sister Kate and their mother Beth.
The Production. Todd Rosenthal has designed a huge three-story house with an attic at the top, two rooms below that and the rest of the house on stage level. A staircase stage right leads to the upper floors. A revolve on stage level reveals other rooms and playing areas. For all this space, director Annie Tippe keeps many intimate scenes center stage in a small area, or on the stairs, and sometimes on the second floor.
Frank (Jake Epstein) and Alice (Isabella Esler) are introduced first. Frank is stage left; Alice is stage right. Each is in their own pool of light (kudos to lighting designer Japhy Weideman). As Frank, Jake Epstein is understated, charming, and conciliatory as he leaves Alice a phone message regretting the fight and urging her to call him, reminding her his flight is at 8:00 pm. As Alice, Isabella Esler is outstanding, full of angst, confusion, anger and hurt. She also sings beautifully and with tense emotion.
Then the whole stage ‘explodes’ with activity across the stage and characters we’ve never seen before, each singing that Alice should come home, it’s urgent, something has happened. There is Beth (Mariano Torres) Alice’s upset mother; Kate (Valeria Ceballos) Alice’s composed sister, Hannah (Julia Pulo) Alice’s loyal, talkative friend, and a chorus of “Furies”, (Kaylee Harwood, Arinea Hermans, Zoë O’Connor). There’s been an accident—this is not a spoiler; it’s the second song- “Alice Finds Out.” Frank was in an accident at 8:22 pm. Alice is confused. His plane was at 8:00 pm. The accident was at 8:22 pm in a part of town nowhere near their home or the airport. Alice spends almost the rest of the show trying to find out what happened. So do we because there is so much singing going on that the main thread—Alice noting Frank’s time of the flight and the time of the accident—is almost obliterated by the Furies singing other lyrics at full throttle, thus ‘obstructing’ Alice’s lyrics. And it’s not an isolated incident in this often busy with activity, over-amplified musical. Often the singers are fighting to be heard/understood as the band overpowers them. This was also a complaint in my review of the previous iteration at Berkeley Street. Balancing sound seems to be a mystery in so many musicals.
Mysteries appear in Britta Johnson’s book of the show. Frank had his secrets. So do other characters. Life After skirts around these mysteries for most of the play and what actually happened and where Frank was going before the accident. That it doesn’t resolve them fully seems a tease. Why spend all that time noting the mystery without resolving it?
Johnson has said in her program note that ‘grief is hard to describe….so I started to write some music.” Johnson is a wonderful lyricist who can encapsulate a host of conflicting emotions in richly worded songs, especially for Alice. Frank, Beth, Kate and Alice since: “Control what you can, let go of the rest.” Sound, thoughtful advice. Britta Johnson’s lyrics are equally as poetic in “Wallpaper”, a devastating song for Beth, passionately sung by Mariand Torres, who laments her absent husband with bitterness. Alice’s sister Kate has her own regrets that we find out late in the musical and Johnson deals with Kate’s sense of loss in a way as sensitive as the others.
While one is impressed with Britta Johnson’s prodigious talent, one can’t deny that this now boated, loud, unnecessarily garish musical could do with judicious, ruthless cutting to get back to what made it notable. It’s now grown to 90 minutes and 22 songs.
The most poignant song in the whole cycle is “Wallpaper” when Beth, Alice and Kate are painting Frank’s room as their final good-by. Kate always hated it and felt she was ignored when she asked Frank to paint it. It is the most effective scene because it’s only the three of them on stage, quiet, focused and slowly painting. It says everything about their shared sense of loss and grief and yet shows them in a distinctive light. The show should end there but Johnson has three more songs which really re-state what has already been expressed. One song is “Will I Grow?” sung by Alice. Well, yeah of course, it’s obvious in the “Wallpaper” scene when Alice sees the pain of her mother and sister, and starts to paint the wall, when she refused before. Cut the song.
This is followed by “Snow”. It’s a flashback scene in the musical. Frank has come home at 2 am to celebrate Alice’s birthday. Alice is still awake. Frank suggests they go for a walk in the snow because Alice loves the snow. They walk for two hours, father and loving daughter. They talk and laugh. What then to make of the scene later in the morning in which Frank wants Alice to change her plans, she won’t and they fight. There is no hint of the sweetness of the previous “Snow” scene. Cut it.
This is really a story about a family of four and Alice’s teacher Ms Hopkins (an excellent Chilina Kennedy). One might add Hannah (a fine Julia Pulo), Alice’s best friend, but that is perhaps being generous—we need Hannah to reveal a mystery about where Alice’s father might have been.
Life After is really about a family of four and another woman. One wonders why there is a chorus of three who often portray snooty classmates of Alice but rarely forward the plot in a way that is clear?
Director Annie Tippe and choreographer, Ann Yee fill the stage with lots of activity and busy movement, seemingly for no reason, and one wonders what all this frantic activity is all about? Scenes are most effective when characters are isolated in their own emotional solitude, but the general swirl of activity leaves one dizzy.
Why is Jake Epstein as Frank often directed as if he was a song and dance man doing a Las Vegas (Broadway?) routine, instead of a character with a reputation for charming his audiences with wise advice?
Why is there a Las Vegas kind of number coming from nowhere, anyway?
Comment. Life After has had a storied past. Britta Johnson first began writing the show when she was a teenager who was grieving over the death of her father and the death of a friend of hers. The show had a reading at the Paprika Festival (a festival of work created by teenagers); it had a stint at the Fringe Festival; it was produced by the Musical Stage Company and the Canadian Stage company in an expanded version (75 minutes 18 songs) at the 244 seat Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto. It then had a run at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and another run at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago where it was expanded further and took on new creatives and Yonge Theatricals as the main producer. It is this expanded version (90 minutes and 22 songs) that is playing at the Ed Mirvish Theatre (2,000 seats, but only the 1000 seat orchestra section is being sold) in Toronto with the intention of taking it to Broadway. I get a sinking feeling that Britta Johnson let go of her poignant musical and allowed it to be distorted out of proportion by those who want to take it to Broadway, a place that has proven again and again, it rarely appreciates delicate work like this used to be. Disappointing and heartbreaking.
Yonge Street Theatricals presents:
Plays until May 10, 2025.
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
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