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Soon – Signature Theatre

Jordan Wright
March 30, 2015
Special to The Alexandria Times
 

Joshua Morgan (Steven), Natascia Diaz (Adrienne), Alex Brightman (Jonah), and Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood.

Joshua Morgan (Steven), Natascia Diaz (Adrienne), Alex Brightman (Jonah), and
Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood.

The world is ending and Charlie (Jessica Hershberg) is obsessed by the lurid headlines. Listening to broadcasts of the President’s speech declaring the planet’s demise, she becomes consumed by Wolf Blitzer. “His voice reminds me of my father’s,” she admits. Her dwindling stash of peanut butter explains her inability to rise up from the imagined safety of her sofa to venture out into the world to replenish it and she holes up in her tawdry East Village apartment while indulging in the schadenfreude of CNN’s apocalyptic reports of the devastating effects of climate change. Agoraphobic, depressive, defeatist and snide, she’s hardly anyone’s idea of a heroine.

Her sometime boyfriend, Jonah (Alex Brightman) can’t lure her outdoors and neither can her mother, Adrienne (Natascia Diaz), nor her roomie, Steven (Joshua Morgan). “I’m busy acknowledging the inevitable,” she moans, forgoing her dreams of starting a neighborhood bakery. And as she stays put in her apartment with her pet goldfish, Herschel, life goes on around her while the others appear and disappear both in the present and from the beyond.

Alex Brightman (Jonah) and Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood.

Alex Brightman (Jonah) and Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature
Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood.

In Soon a compact musical with book, music and lyrics by Nick Blaemire, the four intersecting lives are highlighted through some pretty quirky tunes. “Peanut Butter” and “Bar Mitzvah for the First Jewish Fish” are two of the eleven numbers that express the mood of the characters.

Director Matthew Gardiner, who last year brought us the brilliant Sunday in the Park with George, has assembled a capable cast of top-drawer talent to push this musical to the next level. In particular Natascia Diaz, who we raved about in last year’s The Three Penny Opera, and Joshua Morgan, whose performance as the campy gay roommate electrifies the stage and provides necessary comic relief.

Also of note are the production values enhanced by the work of Projection Designer, Matthew Haber, who splashes across the walls the gloom-and-doom newsreels of the world’s natural disasters; and Dan Conway whose set design, replete with crime prevention bars on the apartment, reflect Charlie’s self-imposed, emotional prison.

 Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood

Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood

My only complaint is with the story. It is overly challenging to drum up empathy for Charlie, even when we discover that she has contracted a disease through her own mother. She is heartless and dismissive to Jonah, who begs for her affections. “Everything I ever wanted never happened,” she whines. Who puts up with that? Well, the long-suffering Jonah, the man who gives her a goldfish in hopes that it will bond him to her forever, does. Even in a particularly tender moment when he tells her that his parents have offered to pay for her medical care, she blows him off.

By the time we get to the fairytale ending and Charlie has caved to Jonah’s unfathomable love, it is of little satisfaction to watch them picnicking while the world ends to the strains of the number, “Make Love”. Think post-apocalyptic sci-fi romance. Millennials will thrill to the futility and despair.

Through April 26th in the ARK Theatre at Signature Theatre (Shirlington Village), 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call 703 820-9771 or visit www.signature-theatre.org.

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