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Beloved last autumn at Playwrights Horizons, David Adjmi’s Stereophonic becomes a fully fledged phenomenon with its Broadway run. The premise is simplicity itself — a band work on a recording in a 1970s California studio — but the genius lies in the details of their making an album and surviving one other. It’s by turns cacklingly funny, achingly sad and coffee-break quotidian, with fine music courtesy of Arcade Fire alumnus Will Butler.
The studio is the set for the duration, and it’s an intimate vantage point for an audience. Upfront is the sprawling control room, where the band members and two engineers hang out around the mixing board on cushions, chat about music and relationships, spiral and recover. Looming behind is the studio proper — the set’s rear wall is the glass divider — where they belt out a verse or fine-tune the tempo and timbre of a drumbeat.
Fleetwood Mac is the go-to comparison, most notably because here, too, the five-person, Anglo-American line-up of men and women has messy internal relationships. Guitarist Peter (Tom Pecinka), the domineering mastermind, and sylphic singer Diana (Sarah Pidgeon) are partners locked in a battle of egos in art and love. Something might brew meanwhile between bassist Reg (Will Brill, creating an indelible portrait of eccentric energy) and keyboardist Holly (Juliana Canfield). Simon (Chris Stack), the amused drummer, keeps an eye on the band’s emotional pulse.
Yet this isn’t a secret history of any particular band, despite the 1976-77 time period and west coast locations, and, more importantly, it doesn’t feel like one. In Daniel Aukin’s immersive production, Adjmi’s minutely imagined exchanges create a rippling weather system all of their own, grounding the big talents and personalities of the larger-than-life musicians. Petty and pivotal conversations about life and music exist side by side in the tangle of romantic and artistic egos as the play’s acts phase subtly across recording sessions and several months.
The foreground-background split of David Zinn’s set constantly visualises these struggles for self-realisation. They talk, try, bicker, then try again. It’s worth underlining that Stereophonic is not a clandestine musical, but a play with scenes of music-making, mostly in snippets (though it might satisfy anyone disappointed by musicals ostensibly about music). The cast’s singing and playing are impressively robust and nimble, as when Pidgeon’s voice fills the room, or a track falls into place with a sweet-spot adjustment — such as “Masquerade”, a loping song that breaks into a run like Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”.
Peter’s harangues of Diana — her singing and herself — brutally target her most vulnerable moments, and another play might make this the throughline. But Adjmi is just as focused on Diana’s huddles with Holly versus “the boys” or the quiddity of Reg, whose childlike pot-fuelled rant about houseboats is a convulsive highlight. A stealth everyman hero emerges in the studio’s lead engineer, the appealingly schlubby Grover (Eli Gelb), who is assisted by Charlie (Andrew R Butler). Grover grows from feeling imposter syndrome to showing a hyper-tuned ear and diplomacy skills.
Peter and Diana look and act the part of ascendant pop stars, resplendent in Enver Chakartash’s flared costumes. They and Reg vibrate on a frequency that suggests they could not be doing anything other than making beautiful music. But Grover too feels this need sharply, and one senses in Adjmi’s creative boiler room a distinct awareness of every heart behind the music. And, like so much great pop, you want to hear it all again.
★★★★★
To August 18, stereophonicplay.com
