"Love me. Love me please. Or break my heart." In a nutshell, these lyrics contain the plaintive call behind "Falsettos," a musical opera by William Finn currently being performed by the Princeton University Players. This human need for love is universal and simple, but the story, in which it is contained, is endlessly complicated.
"Falsettos," directed by Ben Beckley '03, centers around Marvin (played by Nathan Freeman '03). He is married to Trina (Sarah Donner, a Westminster Choir College student), and they have a son, Jason (Rinaldo Martinez '04).
Domestic life is shattered when Marvin falls in love with Whizzer (Daeil Cha '03) and brings his gay lover to live in his house. Whizzer is too great of a guy for anyone to hate, so Trina accepts his presence despite her own reservations and Jason comes to worship him, while still remaining confused about his family structure, as any 11-year-old would be if presented with this particular one.
Their situation becomes yet stranger when Trina falls in love with and then marries Mendel (Rodrigo Vega, also from Westminster), Marvin's therapist.
Add to this mix a lesbian couple living next door comprised of an internist (Aliza Kennerly '04) and her lover, a kosher caterer (Melanie Velo-Simpson '04). The recipe for dysfunction is thus set.
Early on in the play, Jason asks his mother, "What is normal?" He receives the response from Trina, "I wouldn't know."
And leaving the theater after this production, an audience member may question the same thing.
It is an absurdist reality, in which all the characters don dark sunglasses to sing "Love is Blind," and the men in the cast squeak out "March of the Falsettos" while doing a clumsy-but-clever dance (choreographed with humor by W. John McMath '03).
The writing lacks strong endings and many of the songs are much too long to retain the audience's interest.
However, the sense of dark humor always come across as young Jason bluntly states: "My father's a homo. My mother's not thrilled at all," and Trina deadpans "Just what I wanted — my ex-husband's ex-lover at a Little League game. Isn't it every mother's dream?"
It is a decidedly talented cast. Freeman's voice is distinctive and strong (so much so that he occasionally overpowers the blending in vocal quartets) an shows remarkable range stylistically.
Tackling ballads, up-tempo tunes and angry songs alike, Freeman's intensity and effortless vocal riffs are a pleasure to witness.
Martinez's physical mastery of such a youthful character is hysterical, particularly the scenes in which Jason grapples with learning the Hebrew for his Bar Mitzvah.
Vega is charming as the self-deprecating therapist who refuses to talk about his own problems much of the time. He is central in the play's larger commentary on psychology, family and life in the early '80s.
As the kosher caterer, Velo-Simpson's songs are occasionally out of her register and don't do her voice justice. She still manages to steal almost every scene she is in, though, with her comedic facial expressions.
The small improvisational "business" she creates for herself, unfortunately for her fellow actors, are so funny that they consistently upstage whatever else is going on.
One of the highlights is Donner's portrayal of Trina's unraveling.
Wielding a knife (to chop up obviously phallic foods like carrots and bananas) and repeating "I'm breaking down, I'm breaking down," Donner's anger is comically understated as a sort of "Donna-Reed-gone wrong." Her refusal to take the piece over the top is precisely what makes it so funny.
I walked into the theater with no prior knowledge of "Falsettos" and left having spent a good deal of two and a half hours laughing.
The comic bits of the piece are very strong, but it is difficult to get emotionally involved with the story because of weak characterization. Most characters exist only as stereotypes and one wishes that they were more dimensional.
I wanted so badly to like these people — to rejoice in their dysfunction and empathize with their search for love. Yet it never happened.
This being an opera, the music is so complex, that perhaps other elements fell by the wayside in last-minute rehearsals. Because it is a show with great songs and fantastic humor, many quieter moments are played too far upstage. A character dying of AIDS never really shows any shift in physical energy or demeanor, and there are small things missing, like a sound effect in a squash game of the racquet hitting the ball.
All in all, however, "Falsettos" is an interesting journey. Like any good episode of The Jerry Springer Show, having witnessed the dysfunction of other's lives, you will leave feeling significantly better about your own.
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