You've reached midlife and you find yourself pondering the meaning of your existence. To whom do you turn for advice? In this buoyant, ballsy, bittersweet one-woman musical, the answer is William Shakespeare. In this world premiere, veteran stage actor and cabaret performer Amanda McBroom plays a successful 52-year-old songwriter who has lost her sense of who she is and what she wants. Kate, her character, feels pulled in various directions by Kate's husband, her director, her agent, and a younger acquaintance who is trying to entice her into having an affair. She regains her footing in the course of a difficult day in a hotel room in Cleveland, finding artistic inspiration and personal guidance as she channels the voices of some of Shakespeare's most vivid female characters.
McBroom created the show with her longtime collaborator Joel Silberman, who directs here. She wrote the lyrics; he wrote nearly all the music. At Sunday's matinee, Silberman warned the audience that this is a new piece and that changes are being made nightly. The production is in far better shape than his statement implied, however. True, some of the transitions between Kate's story and the Shakespeare-inspired songs could be clearer. But overall this show works beautifully. Silberman's melodies--a mixture of pop and blues styles, with a couple of echoes of Kurt Weill--nicely mesh with McBroom's consistently clever, character-revealing lyrics.
Of course you need a dynamic performer to pull something like this off, and McBroom has what it takes. Her performance, laced with self-deprecating humor, is heartfelt but never overwrought. She also brings real pizazz to the musical numbers. Trefoni Michael Rizzi's set, dominated by heavy wooden furniture, has an appropriately timeless quality. The show will be restaged at the Old Globe in San Diego next year, and the creators then hope to take it to New York. There's every reason to be optimistic about its future.