Three mid-century icons take a long trip in the Broadway premiere of ‘Flying over Sunset’ at Lincoln Center
Generally lasting eight to twelve hrs, a vacation on LSD, because of the distorted notion of time induced by the drug, can feel a great deal extended than it actually is. It unquestionably does in the new two-hour-and-45-moment musical Flying in excess of Sunset, producing its Broadway debut at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Middle, and you don’t even have to just take it.
The original two-act present, with book and course by James Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George Into the Woods Falsettos), music by Tom Kitt (Up coming to Ordinary If/Then), and lyrics by Michael Korie (Grey Gardens), presents an imagined account of three renowned authentic-lifetime figures from the mid-century – writer Aldous Huxley (Brave New Earth The Doorways of Perception) diplomat, congresswoman, playwright, and journal editor Clare Boothe Luce (The Females Vanity Reasonable) and Hollywood movie star Cary Grant – coming together at Luce’s Pacific-coast seashore property in Southern California in the 1950s, to share the experience and relationship of dropping acid. The fictional premise was motivated by the truth that just about every of them is recognised to have experimented individually with the artificial hallucinogen at a time when it was not only lawful, but also advocated for legit therapeutic procedure.
In the partaking very first act, the perfectly-investigated lead figures are introduced just one by one particular, with initially-particular person accounts of their present predicaments at crossroads in their life, critical factors of their backstories, and the issues they want to tackle in their initial introductions to the head-altering substance, taken beneath the guided supervision of writer and consciousness mentor Gerald Read by Huxley and Luce, and of his wife’s psychiatrist by Grant. Beneath its head-expanding impact, every has “wondrous” own visions filled with coloration and insights that make them want to do it once more.
Although lunching at The Brown Derby in LA, Luce, Listened to, and Huxley accidentally face Grant. She asks him to join them, and then suggests that the four fellow “explorers” all acquire at her residence to fall a dose with each other in the spirit of communal enlightenment. They do in Act II, belaboring the founded plot factors and extending the managing time with redundant, indulgent, overly extended, and monotonous scenes of their trips, which incorporate small to the enhancement of the tale, the people, or their lives that we didn’t currently know. Bummer.
The top rated-notch Broadway cast, starring Harry Hadden-Paton as Huxley, Tony Yazbeck as Grant, and Carmen Cusack as Luce, and featuring Robert Sella as Listened to, believably captures the personalities, accents, speech styles, and fears of their effectively-acknowledged roles, and delivers masterful performances of Michelle Dorrance’s various choreography and Kitt’s beautiful score (such as their four-element harmony on “The 23rd Ingredient” and Cusack’s potent heartfelt solos on “Someone” and “How?”), with orchestrations by Michael Starobin and audio course by conductor and keyboardist Kimberly Grigsby. They are provided equally great guidance by Kanisha Marie Feliciano, Nehal Joshi, Emily Pynenburg, Michele Ragusa, Laura Shoop, and Atticus Ware, who contribute some of the most unforgettable moments of the show.
Among the the standouts are Feliciano and Ragusa as Judith and the Handmaiden from Sandro Botticelli’s Italian Renaissance masterpiece Judith and Holofernes, who have occur to daily life in Huxley’s brain and sing the operatic “Bella Donna di Agonia” with him Shoop as Huxley’s dying spouse Maria, who performs the expressive “The Music Plays On” duet with her partner Ware, in an remarkable Lincoln Centre debut as the young Archie Leach (the birth identify of Grant, whose mother selected to clothe him in a girl’s dress), singing and tap dancing with Yazbeck to the show-halting Vaudevillian-type “Funny Money” and the company’s rich rendition of the titular “Flying Over Sunset.”
A lavish structure sets the phase for the authentic locales and people today and their LSD-induced imaginings, with upscale period sets by Beowulf Boritt and costumes by Toni-Leslie James, vibrant psychedelic lighting by Bradley King and projections by 59 Productions, and both of those natural and eerie transcendental sound by Dan Moses Schreier. There is a ton to take pleasure in in Traveling around Sunset, but the finest of it effortlessly suits into the to start with exhilarating act, with no the useless repetition of stretching it to two.
Working Time: About two several hours and 45 minutes, together with an intermission.
Flying in excess of Sunset plays as a result of February 6, 2022, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Centre, 150 West 65th Avenue, NYC. For tickets (starting up at $59), go on the web. Anyone need to exhibit evidence of comprehensive COVID-19 vaccination and a photo ID to enter and need to put on a properly fitted mask over nose and mouth at all situations when inside the developing.
You can watch a montage of the clearly show here:
