Although Stephen Sondheim was a great songwriter, he never wrote a book for any of his many musicals. He did expand, however, what we consider appropriate subject matter for musicals, since he often chose stories that defied showbiz conventions.
I remember sitting in an early 1970 Broadway performance of “Company” and the audience around me having no clue why the show kept repeating Bobby’s birthday. In previews for “Pacific Overtures,” some theatergoers did not understand why some male actors were playing female roles. And even before “Sweeney Todd” opened, there was outrage that Sondheim had now gone way too far: he’d written a musical about cannibalism!
The musical form is stronger for all of Sondheim’s experimentation, and because of him we now have wonderful shows like “The Heart,” which opened Thursday at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre. It’s about a 19-year-old California surfer named Simon (Nick T. Daly, being immensely sympathetic) who gets in a near-fatal car accident on his way home from the beach. When Simon arrives at the emergency room, he is alive but declared brain dead. “The Heart” dramatizes what happens when an organ specialist (Lincoln Clauss, being totally not what you’d expect of such a medical professional) approaches Simon’s estranged parents (Joaquina Kalukango and Jason Tam) about donating their son’s lungs, kidneys, liver and heart to recipients in need.
Christopher Ashley directs, and it is obvious from the first scene that he’s the same director who won a Tony for bringing “Come From Away” to the Broadway stage. Ashley makes a lot happen with seemingly very little. If memory serves, the set for that 9/11 musical featured little more than a bunch of chairs that got moved around a lot. Robert Brill’s set for “The Heart” recycles those chairs, as well as an operating table.
What drives “The Heart” and keeps it beating is the pulsating score by Anne Eisendrath and Ian Eisendrath. The songs work in perfect unison with Lucy Mackinnon’s high-tech videos. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what has the upper hand, the humans or the machinery, which makes sense for a musical about organ transplants.
It’s also odd to write this sentence, but you could actually get up and dance to songs about a frantic ambulance ride to the hospital or an hours-long ordeal in the O.R.
“The Heart” is definitely a much better title for a musical than “The Liver” or “The Kidneys” or “The Lungs.” It speaks to the power of this musical, however, that you will want to know what happens to Simon’s other body parts after his death on the operating table. Based on Maylis de Kerangal’s 2014 novel of the same title, Kait Kerrigan’s book for “The Heart” follows only the story of the heart recipient (Heidi Blickenstaff) in four scenes that reveal the long-awaited phone call from the doctor (Drew Gehling), their prep session at the hospital, her writing a letter to the donor’s parents and the operation itself.
If I may play book writer for a moment, it might give needed variety to this musical if a different recipient occupied each of those four stories.
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