Matthew Lopez is America’s hottest playwright. He launched a seismic eruption in the theatrical world with his 2018 creation, “The Inheritance,” a seven-hour stage epic focused upon the evolution of gay culture in America and the AIDS crisis’ role in it. The ambitious project won every major award for a new play in both New York and London, and Lopez has followed it up with an acclaimed script for a 2022 musical adaptation of the film comedy, “Some Like It Hot.”
For the newest production on its proscenium stage, the Guthrie Theater has reached back to an earlier Lopez play, 2011’s “Somewhere,” a work that – while possessing much charm – nevertheless bears the marks of an author still trying to find his voice.
It’s what’s known as a kitchen-sink drama, in which family issues are hashed out within the claustrophobic confines of a conflict-filled home. And Lopez obeys most of the conventions of the form, save for one imaginative twist: The characters periodically break into dance numbers that hint at the liberation they seek.
While those interludes are engaging, I came away from director Joseph Haj’s staging of “Somewhere” feeling that there needs to be more passion in this tale of a family full of urban dreamers struggling to find their way into show business and out of poverty. It never achieves the naturalism necessary to make its realistic exchanges absorbing, nor the abandon that would give flight to its fantastical dance sequences.
We’re taken to 1959 Manhattan and the household of a Puerto Rican family that’s simply mad about musical theater. Mom is a Broadway usher, her oldest a dancer who played a small role in “The King and I” as a child, his sister studying dance and youngest brother taking acting lessons. While their musician patriarch is on the road, the eldest sibling has become the clear-eyed voice of discipline in the household who struggles with the strain of their hand-to-mouth life.
Yet it’s a family driven by dreams, and some hope arrives when an adopted brother who’s since fled the nest becomes an assistant to choreographer and director Jerome Robbins during his work on the stage and film versions of the musical, “West Side Story.” Could this story rooted in conflicts between street gangs of Puerto Rican and European descent prove a conduit for their ambitions?
While leaning on Robbins’ style for its dance interludes – kudos to choreographer Maija Garcia for deftly capturing his movement vocabulary and the performers for so ably executing it – the script’s structure seems more an homage to Tennessee Williams.
Mother Inez is as devoted to her delusions as a typical Williams heroine, and Maggie Bofill makes her quite engaging when she launches into one of Lopez’s humorous stream-of-consciousness monologues. But Preston Perez plays eldest brother Alejandro too close to the vest, keeping his inner life obscured, even holding too much in reserve during his inevitable act-two explosion. Yet it’s a demanding role, as it also requires spotlight-seizing dance skills, and Perez gracefully delivers on that account.
It feels odd to say that a show would be well-served by being both more realistic and more fantastical, but “Somewhere” probably would, as it’s driven by the friction between heartwarming dreams and harsh realities, and more palpable passion would help raise the emotional stakes for both the characters and audiences.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.
‘Somewhere’
When: Through Feb. 1
Where: Guthrie Theater, 818 Second St. S., Mpls.
Tickets: $94-$18, available at 612-377-2224 or guthrietheater.org
Capsule: A promising premise could use more passion to take flight.
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