Like Love: When the Muses Arrow Misses the Mark

Like Love
TBG Theatre

What happens when you take three Broadway stars, put them in a black box, and give them a pianist? Like Love, is what happens. And ladies and gentlemen of the theatre, it's not always the best results.
Barry Jay Kaplan (Book and Lyrics) and Lewis Finn (Music) took the idea of "fuck buddies" and what would happen if they were to fall in love with each other and wrote a show about. In the vein of The Last Five Years the duo have crafted a show that is wondrous to listen to, yet tricky to stage and to watch. They have delivered to NYMF a show, who's score is beautiful, lyrics poignant and touching, yet who's book is nil and what little there is, is confusing.
You would think casting Broadway and Sondheim veteran Danielle Ferland as the cupidesque character of love (she morphs form scene to scene, male to female, bartender to girl confidant, with not a lot of grace a penash) would give the show a little something extra, but sadly it leads the audience to edge of their seats waiting for "Little Red" to ask for her glasses. Ferland's characterization of love, decked out in red - did anyone think about the colors before they dressed her - is weak, and she relies on her "star" power to get her through the show. Ms Ferland is awkward, not knowing how or what do to with herself as she goes through the motions of matchmaker. This could be poor direction, but one would think that an actress like Ms Ferland, who has worked with the likes of James Lapine, could make anything work, even lack of guidance.
The true surprises of the night were High Fidelity stars Emily Swallow and Jon Patrick Walker. Seeing the billing for the show, one would assume that Ms Ferland would refuse to be upstage and out shined by her newbie co stars, but she lets herself not just be upstage, but out performed and run down by these new faces.
Ms Swallow finds a way to open herself like a fresh wound, and let the audience into her secret world. She has a better grasp on the music, it's meanings and undertones, than her fellow cast mates, as well as being more believable in her role than the rest. Her voice is a pleasant sound that made the evening seem to fly by - there should be more song birds like this in the theatre, who understand the power of understating something as opposed to belt everything to the rafters.
Jon Patrick Walker, while not a bad performer, pales in comparison to Ms Swallow. Walker's performance is not so much sublime, but still endearing. He has the soft voice of a tenor, and there were moments when he was playing the music for all it was worth that you wanted to say, "Hey, lady, what are you waiting for go get him he loves you, and if you won't I will!"
I will praise all three of these actors for making a show go without the proper dialogue to move it along. Like Love's faults are not in it's music, but in the script that we do not ever really have. There are moments where I thought that Mr Kaplan would pull out a real flushed out story, but he only left me hanging dry. As a team, though, musically, that it is, Kaplan and Flinn are almost unstoppable. The tunes they have constructed are emotional and raw, giving the actors the meat for the bare bones of the script. If this team were to put together a cast album, I'm almost positive it would sell, becoming a cult hit, much like their predecessor in the field of the small cast love musical The Last Five Years.
Like Love is a fine musical, if work shopped or done as a reading, but as a full scale production it is like a souffle that just couldn't make it to the top, and is sitting at the bottom of the pan, limp, because some forgot to put in the flour.