Heed the call to ‘See Rock City’

Smart new musical relates six beguiling stories about travelers

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Walking into The Duke on 42nd Street, where "See Rock City & Other Destinations" opened Sunday, spectators will find the space cleared of its usual theater seats. Instead, a huge mound of different sorts of lawn chairs is heaped in a corner of the lofty area.

Just before the Transport Group Theatre Company production begins, members of the cast and crew assist viewers in positioning their chairs variously around a central playing area.

The Transport Group is known, among other things, for novel stagings (like its recent environmental revival of "The Boys in the Band" in a penthouse), but this casual seating arrangement underlines the transient nature of "See Rock City," which is a new musical about people visiting different tourist spots.

Six separate though always engaging stories are fleetly told in 90 minutes through Adam Mathias' well-chosen words and Brad Alexander's frequently lovely music.

The first concerns a hash house waitress emboldened to join a young stranger on his drive across the Carolinas to a city built of stones. In another, a UFO seeker spends the night alone in the New Mexico desert outside Roswell, desperately hoping for a close encounter. Yet another episode regards a single woman taking her ailing grandfather to the Alamo, where 60 years before he met his now-passed wife. Prep school buddies hopping the subway to Coney Island and a distraught bride-to-be and her mystical guide to Niagara Falls are others.

My particular favorite occurs on the deck of a cruise ship in Alaska waters as three estranged sisters prepare to scatter their father's ashes in the region he loved so well. They squabble away until the peacemaker among the trio begins to recall a fanciful ditty their father wrote for them to sing on just such a cruise years ago. Slowly the siblings haltingly remember "Three Fair Queens of the North" and their middle-aged differences fade even as their voices seem to grow younger in sweet harmony.

These fresh, sincere stories do not intersect but are linked by the consistent excellence of Mathias' agile, perceptive lyrics and the sometimes gentle, sometimes fervent, but always appealing quality of Alexander's music. Musical director Justin Hatchimonji's vocal arrangements sound particularly handsome while the guitar colorings in his orchestrations for a small ensemble highlight the contemporary nature of the score.

Seven skillful actor-singers ably depict at least two characters each. Jonathan Hammond is nicely unassertive as a lawyer brushed by love in the Alamo scene and later drives the Niagara Falls episode as its mesmerizing guide. Donna Lynne Champlin is dramatic as get-out as that edgy bride on the brink and droll as the snarky one among those sisters. Mamie Parris strikes all the right funny-wistful notes as the Carolina waitress while Stanley Bahorek lends his young UFO-hunting loser a strong voice and much intensity.

Director Jack Cummings III moves his performers dynamically among the audience while making clever use of the expansive theater space. Designer R. Lee Kennedy's lighting is both inventive and evocative, particularly so in the Roswell and title episodes. Altogether this slightly unusual and very well-executed production enhances the beguiling charms of a tuneful travelogue that delights in taking viewers off the beaten path.

"See Rock City & Other Destinations" continues through Aug. 8 at The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St., New York. Call (646) 223-3010 or visit www.dukeon42.org.