Marry Me a Little

On Saturday, May 9 we saw preview performances of two musicals, “Marry Me a Little” and “The Last Five Years” at the David Henry Hwang Theater in the Little Tokyo district of Downtown Los Angeles.  The performances are produced by East West Players, an Asian-American Theater company.  Our cousin, Marc Macalintal, is the musical director for both shows.  Before driving to the theater my wife read online about another musical we had seen nearly three years ago.  She read that “Rock of Ages” got five Tony nominations.  We had seen it at the Vanguard in Hollywood and it features many 80’s pop songs and Hair Metal hits such as Europe’s “The Final Countdown” and Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherrie”.  On the drive to the theater we listened to “When I’m with You” by Sheriff on KOST, one of the NOW Classic Power Ballads. (See later review)

We went with my mother-in-law and her friend and arrived at the theater fifteen minutes before the 8 pm start time.  The expansive parking lot was more crowded than usual, perhaps due to a party going on at a nearby building.  Our tickets were for seats in the front row of the balcony.  Unfortunately the balcony rail was a bit too high for my mother-in-law and her friend and they had to go back a row to see the entire stage.  Getting to the balcony requires climbing two flights of stairs: one to get to the regular theater level and another to get to the balcony.  It’s also good to remember that there are restrooms on the balcony level in addition to the ground level.  Before the first show began, producing artistic director Tim Dang spoke.  He said that since this was a preview performance they were still working out the artistic elements of the shows.

Both shows together are billed as “An Evening of Two One-Act Musicals.”  The idea of two for one is a common theme throughout the evening.  “Marry Me a Little” is an off-Broadway musical consisting of songs by Stephen Sondheim that were cut from other musicals.  Our first impression was the set: a one-room apartment with high ceilings and high bay windows with a “view” of other buildings on Manhattan’s upper west side.  It’s a very thorough set with all the furniture, shelves, cupboards, a chest, and hooks for storage.  It really looks “lived in”.  The furniture, especially the TV set, appears to be a couple of decades old, though other technology shown later indicates the time period to be modern day.  The kitchen is very small with no dishwasher or microwave though it has a large island counter that doubles as a dining surface.  It had two doors: the entrance on the left and the door to the (mostly unseen) bathroom on the other side.

The plot is fairly minimal, portraying two single people alone on a Saturday night.  They do many ordinary things such as put away groceries, eat dinner, get ready for bed, etc.  At one point the male lead even unclogs the sink with a plunger.   Their activities are infused with songs about fantasies, past relationships, desires for companionship, and hopes for the future.  Like “Rock of Ages” the music wasn’t originally written for the musical.  The songs were cut from other Sondheim musicals such as “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, “Follies”, and “Company”.  My wife felt they sounded better than most other Sondheim songs she’s heard.  Many are humorous and involve fun dance numbers.  Others are more serious possibly indicating a past heartache or deep longing.  There are no spoken lines and the show doesn’t seem like it has much of a plot.  Still, they do a great job mixing choreography with the ordinary chores.  The actions of the two independent single lives are well coordinated.  Often they sing separately but sometimes they sing together.

The actors/singers do a great job, both of them singing well.  They both seem like regular people but when they sing they seem like the charismatic stars of their imagined fairy tales.  The male lead is especially good at this transformation, seeming to flip a switch from aloof to expressive, even silly.  I could sense that they felt their lives were incomplete, yet they didn’t seem unhappy either.  We could really relate to them.  My wife lived in a single room apartment on her own for one year and I lived in three different apartments on my own, two of them being single room places.  We could relate to the characters putting away groceries and not having plans on a Saturday night.  What’s ironic is that on that Saturday we did have plans: to watch a show about two characters that didn’t have plans.  So many musicals are about fantastic adventures, dramatic conflicts, and characters that do or experience more in two hours that any of us will in a lifetime.  It was refreshing to see a show scale back the drama and celebrate the ordinary.

The musical consisted of the characters singing with Marc accompanying them on the piano behind the set.  We couldn’t see him.  He plays well enough that additional instrumentation is not needed.  Sometimes there are short pauses between songs and other times the songs flow seamlessly from one to the other.  As stated, they sounded better than your average Sondheim.

The two for one is that we get to see two people’s single evenings in one apartment set.  The show didn’t seem too long or too short.  Most of my relatives who also saw both shows preferred the second to the first one because the first didn’t have much of a story.  But its relatability struck a chord with us.  Why not spend an evening singing a little, dancing a little, or marrying a little?