An exquisite glimpse into grief, 'Life After' deserves a nice long hereafter
Grief is anything but orderly—the Kübler-Ross model belongs more to pop culture than actual psychology. In attempting to impose order anyway, in Life After, a newish musical now at the Goodman, librettist-composer Britta Johnson spins an arioso detective story. Hidden within the empty chatter of neighbors dropping off umpteen casseroles, the endless Kiwanis Club tributes, and random well-wishes from total strangers are clues that the perceptive Alice can follow to discover why her father was killed in a car crash miles away from the airport twenty minutes after his flight was scheduled to depart.
Worth relating: they also had a fight hours before. His last voice message, asking her to call back so they could part on a more positive note, plays in her head over and over. Did the fight send him into meltdown? Did it do anything?
Like Fun Home, that other daughter/dead father musical, Life After explores how oddly non-relieving it can feel that the unexpected death of a loved one may not have been one's fault. It instead feels like a violation of cause and effect, but to pursue cause where it may or may not exist is to stare down a rabbit hole. Alice, a debate champion both in and out of school, believes she's equipped to stare down that rabbit hole. But what if it stares back?
Produced in Toronto and San Diego in the late teens, the phrase "Broadway buzz" has surrounded this Chicago mounting. The physical production, dominated by Todd Rosenthal's two-story suburban spread, certainly looks to have enhancement money behind it. But the buzz is earned: Johnson really delivers the brains and the guts she promises in her premise, guided surely by director Annie Tippe, enhanced by Lynne Shankel's orchestrations (and Chris Kong's music direction), and interpreted by performers that one can hope will stick with Life After hereafter.
"Poetry", seemingly the takeaway single from the show, is reflective of Johnson's style: free-flowingly Romantic, colloquial, friendly, rooted in everyday images. And, as performed by Samantha Williams, upon whose shoulders the Goodman production rests, it's intensely rewarding to watch her Alice unburden herself of the weight she's carried non-stop for ninety minutes. But the best of the lot might be "Wallpaper", sung by Alice's mother played by Byronha Marie Parham. It's free-flowing, colloquial, and rooted in the common-enough image of redecorating a deceased loved one's old room. Friendly and Romantic, it's not; it's a force of nature to be reckoned with. It's then followed by one of the most exquisite stillnesses to be found in a musical.
Such still beats must attend to musicals like grief does to life, and we are the richer for it.
Life After runs through July 17th at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St. For tickets or more information please call (312) 443-3800 or click here.
Photos by Jeremy Daniel.