Raven Theatre’s “Octet”/Photo: Joe Mazza
RECOMMENDED
Raven Theatre’s Chicago premiere of “Octet” is one-hundred minutes of wonder. The first moments of the musical begin silently, before the full cast of eight takes the stage. A woman comes and goes. She tidies up a bare-bones gathering space described in the program notes as a “temporary meeting location on the North Side of Chicago.” She straightens a stack of paper cups on a table against the wall, checks the standard-issue gray folding chairs. It’s not a big job. There’s zero of interest in the room. No plants, no posters, no permanent furniture. Still, she brings professional precision to the work. It’s five minutes before the official start time, so why isn’t the set prepared? Is she part of the production crew? Part of the cast? How much attention does she deserve? Touches of uncertainty and order stitch together, a prelude to the profound unmooring and healing to come.
As it turns out, the bare meeting room is purposefully free of stimuli. It’s part of the cure sought by the eight overstimulated sufferers who will fill the room. The woman, Paula, played with commanding kindness by Teressa LaGamba, is the session leader of an addiction therapy group. As the seven others file silently in, Paula presents them with a velvet-lined wooden box where everyone is expected to park their phones. Some hesitate but grudgingly give in. The first sound of the musical is Paula’s blow-on pitch pipe, the essential tuning instrument of a cappella singing groups. Then come the glorious voices of the cast. They begin with an octave slide, a vocal roller-coaster ride that announces how harmonically rich “Octet” will be. A bass singer named Ed, sung with cavernous resonance by Ryder Dean McDaniel, comes in with an ostinato—here, a repeated beat that anchors the sound—that announces how rhythmically sophisticated the show is, too. It’s stunning.
Wherever your head is before the music begins, the opening notes immediately transport you to sensory magic of the soundscape that fills the theater. “Octet” does not let you go. Each of the twelve musical numbers that follow has similar power. There’s the vocal wonder of the pitch-perfect cast (do some members have perfect pitch?) that meets every demand of their a cappella score in which their voices are the only instruments. There are the convincing portrayals by the cast, directed by Keira Fromm, of a wide range of young-adult characters. There’s the superb music direction by Nick Sula. And above all, there’s the breathtaking book and score by the show’s creator Dave Malloy, best known for his opera-like hit musical “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.”
Raven Theatre’s “Octet,” with Joryhebel Ginorio/Photo: Joe Mazza
The illness the gatherers share is an addiction to the internet and other online lures, threats the sufferers refer to as “The Monster.” The poetic lyrics in “Octet”’s songs are as evocative as the music. The first number, “Hymn: The Forest,” introduces The Monster:
The woods are dark and cold,
Clogged with nettles and roots.
There is a monster,
And I am a monster.
Addiction, obsession, Insomnia, depression,
And the fear that I’ve wasted too much of myself
On rapid and vapid click-clicks.
“Octet” progresses as each of the characters, in a round-robin of sung testimonies, highlight their particular obsessions. One theme that builds throughout the cycle is how the characters are trapped by the feedback loops on the internet that cement their addictions. The internet creates and perpetuates loneliness and isolation. At the same time it offers the toxic tonics of false rewards and dangerous connections that deepen the addicts’ pain but keep them hooked. Henry, played with boyish charm and angst by Sam Shankman, offers a funny, unnerving account of his inability to turn away from online games that feature candy.
“Octet”’s most disturbing turn comes in the song “Solo,” which, ironically, is a duet of testimonies by Karly, whose aching sweetness is captured affectingly by Grace Steckler, and Ed. Karly is deep into dating apps but deadened by inane and creepy chit-chat and come-ons by men she engages with. Ed testifies that he’s “just another awkward introverted isolated waste of space, such a failure,” who gets lost in his “drug,” online porn. As the song progresses, we learn how the online lives of Karly and Ed draw them ever deeper into their holes, but yearn all the more for the love they cannot find in them.
Raven Theatre’s “Octet,” with Sam Shankman/Photo: Joe Mazza
Yet, throughout the show, the cure for online loneliness is present. It’s the music.
In choosing a cappella singing as the medium for therapy, Malloy gives his characters an essential, inviolably direct form of human connection. Though testimonies are individual stories, the group backs them up with pure, intricate harmony in which everyone relies on everyone else. A group of people singing in tight collaboration, and so attuned to each other, is as distant from the disembodied soul-sucking technosphere as people can get. The crack ensemble cast of singer-actors also includes Joryhebel Ginorio, Neala Barron, Elliot Esquivel and Jordan Golding. This is Raven Theatre’s first musical in its forty-three-year history. With “Octet,” Raven has delivered a dazzling show—one that also delivers us.
Raven Theatre’s “Octet” has been extended through June 21. Tickets available here.
