Lili (Maggie McDowell), Ryan (Erin Lamar), and Stephanie (Lauren Testerman) do roommate things in Love Quirks. Photographs by Mark Childers.
The soundtrack as you walk into St. Luke’s ought to provide a hint: it’s American songbook standards, like “In Other Words” and “Fever,” rendered by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee, respectively. It primes the audience to expect a retro evening, and Love Quirks, the new musical by Seth Bisen-Hersh (music and lyrics) and Mark Childers (book), while set in the present-day New York of Instagram and Grindr and Twitter, is retro. It wants to be a sweet old-fashioned evening of melody and humor and light romance, and some of the time it succeeds.
“A musical fable based on actual events,” says the program, but one wonders how much those events were tampered with. In telling the story of four single thirtysomething New Yorkers, Childers and Bisen-Hirsh have cut down to the basic basics, and in doing so have created character inconsistencies among this quartet. They are Chris (Matthew Schatz), the handsome jock whose wedding was just called off when he caught his fiancée with another man; Stephanie (Lauren Testerman), the nurse who’s been moping ever since her divorce; her roommate Lili (Maggie McDowell), tending bar while doing graduate studies on “gender oppression”; and Ryan (Erin Lamar), whom Lili is hopelessly in love with and who is a rather stereotypically gay substitute teacher who tutored Chris in college and has been his best bud ever since.
And there you have the two overwhelming we-don’t-buy-its. Why would Chris and Ryan be so close? Ryan lusts after Chris, which is understandable, as Schatz really is cute, and sings well. But what do they talk about, and why wouldn’t Chris be hanging with other jocks, or Ryan at a gay bar? And why is Lili so enraptured with Ryan, who was her prom date years back? There’s a funny-enough number where he keeps dropping hints about his sexuality that she fails to pick up on, but the dynamic between these two really strains credibility.
“The lyrics tend to seize a point and restate it in multiple ways: the title song (and when did you last hear a new score with a title song?) has the four listing past dates’ perversions, oddities, “love quirks.” It’s neat songwriting, though, and pleasant.”
Anyway, New York real estate issues result in all four ending up living together in the same apartment, where we follow the romantic progress, or lack thereof, of each. Chris, a babe magnet, dates casually while cooking killer lasagna for his roomies, until he runs into his ex and falls into a funk. Ryan tries to break his string of very-short-term relationships with a nice guy who annoys him by singing show tunes all the time (more illogic; Ryan would love that). Lili gets drunk and beds her co-bartender, all the while inexplicably pining for Ryan. And Stephanie basically gives up, though we know, and Lili and Ryan know, that Chris and Stephanie are made for each other. We just have to wait for them to realize it.
It's a workable premise for singing song after song about relationships, but the existences of these four are cloistered, almost hermetic. What does Chris do for a living? Do they know no other people? And do they ever talk, or sing, about anything but love? Childers’s book is light and swift and has a good joke or two among all the romantic obsessing. (“I am a changed man.” “Two words that should never go together. Change. Man.”) And Bisen-Hirsh appears to be about one-third there in his quest to be the next Jerry Herman. His score is more traditional-sounding than the present it’s living in, with no hip-hop, much Bacharach-infused perkiness, a couple of waltzes, and even a tango. The lyrics tend to seize a point and restate it in multiple ways: the title song (and when did you last hear a new score with a title song?) has the four listing past dates’ perversions, oddities, “love quirks.” It’s neat songwriting, though, and pleasant, and Bisen-Hirsh’s sentiments will speak to many in the audience: “Relationships blow/ Convoluted, annoying, hello?” Austin Nuckols ably handles the musical direction from a single over-amplified keyboard, while the uncredited sound design, with the cast wearing those disfiguring face mikes, is way too loud. Michael D’Angora’s set is barely there, and Brian Childers, a sometime actor who was so good at the same venue in Danny and Sylvia: A Musical Love Story some years back, directs with pacing and style, though he might get McDowell and Lamar to tone things down a bit.
Bisen-Hirsh was at this performance, and on the way out several theatergoers, mostly older couples, told him how much they enjoyed it. Love Quirks is friendly and diverting, and its creators certainly ought to keep plugging away at it. But to advance to the next level of musical theater writing, they do need to create characters with a little more meat on their bones.
The Love Quirks LLC & D’Angora Entertainment production of Love Quirks is in an open-ended run at St. Luke’s Theatre (308 W. 46th St.). Evening performances are at 8:15 p.m Monday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available through lovequirks.com.
