For diehard fans of romantic powerhouse The Notebook, the latest musical adaptation about the love story between Noah and Allie will likely be a stirring treat. For others, its cloying nature may prove too much.
The reworking is based on the eponymous book, not the 2004 film version starring a magnetic Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. While the book and movie follow the pair in searing “will they, won’t they” detail, the musical mostly belabors grander themes of “love” and “death”.
Three sets of actors (younger, middle age, and older) embody Noah and Allie through various stages, like their first meeting during a chance summer. Following a non-traditional timeline, the show opens at a nursing home; the set is a tranquil blue, adorned by black, wooden banisters and a real creek near the stage’s edge (scenic design by David Zion and Brett J Banakis).
Older Noah (Dorian Harewood) limps on stage, singing about the woes of aging amid his enduring love to Allie: “Time, time, time time / It was never mine, mine, mine mine.” He’s checked into a nursing home, eager for older Allie (Maryann Plunkett) to remember their great love story given her battle with memory loss. Under Michael Greif’s direction, other versions of the couple enter as memories, providing snapshots of the star-crossed romance. The shifting timelines are clear, but the set can feel cramped amid all the maneuvering.
Younger Noah and Allie (John Cardoza and Jordan Tyson, respectively) have an immediate and feral attraction. Bekah Brunstetter’s excellent book crackles with the earlier couple’s spark. Cardoza and Tyson have a playful, dry humor, matching each other’s sarcastic jabs beat-by-beat. But their love – followed by an unending devotion – is brisk. Instant buy-in is required to believe this summer fling holds the weight of something deeper. Plus the charisma of scripted scenes (all far too short) are intercut with bland music by Ingrid Michaelson.
Nearly all of Michaelson’s songs are too saccharine, led by the twinkly flair of a piano or strummed guitar. They are beautiful, but lack a driving objective or need. Michaelson’s best work revolves around the Middle Noah (Ryan Vasquez) and Allie (an impressive Joy Wood). After the summer romance is interrupted, the pair becomes estranged. They only reconnect when Allie spots a picture of Noah’s house in the local newspaper.
The home with its blue shutters, a longtime ambition of Noah, is shown in sparse detail. But Michelson infuses the couple’s mutual lust with the property’s details, buoyed by Vasquez and Wood’s chemistry. The wooden table? Built for Allie. Noah’s smell? Like wood in the rain. It’s an infinitely more interesting portrait of the couple’s spell over each other than generic odes to amour. The middle scenes also include a satisfying reworking of the Notebook’s famous “rain kiss”, a nod to its loyal fanbase.
As an oldest couple, Harewood and Plunkett are tender. Harewood is the musical’s anchor; he threads the memories together with an urgency and sincerity. Plunkett is equally apt, showing the distressing tension between older Allie’s struggle to remember and her current confusion.
But the musical misses an opportunity to capture her inner thoughts. Young and middle Allie each dig into their desires via music; Woods, in particular, gives a stirring solo about making the most of her life – claiming Noah fiercely. “I want to live a life / Where I’m allowed to say / I’m proud of the way / That I spent my days,” Wood bellows. But Plunkett is given the least amount of room to emote. Her recollections are stored in the other Allies (in the song I Wanna Go Back). The use of past and present to deliver subtext is gripping, but leaves questions about her current state.
Dementia is a horrifically flattening illness. But it is difficult to sustain the show’s over two hour runtime on the question of reconciliation. The musical’s use of interracial casting is also frustrating. Younger and middle Allie are both Black, while older Allie is white. The Noahs are cast in a similar fashion. The issues with casting isn’t a problem of believability, but consistency. It’s strange why the racial unity in casting is interrupted, especially with no discernible dramatic choice.
Sympathizers will waive off the choice as negligible, a side effect of race-blind casting. But race isn’t a minor detail, especially with swaths of the play taking place right before and after the Vietnam war – well into the civil rights era.
The Notebook musical hasn’t lost its romantic magic, by any means. But without the equally touching music and a fleshing out of its core courtship, it’s a story that remains underwritten.
