Looking into the abyss, 'Get Out Alive' shows the way forward for life and musical theatre

Nikki Lynette. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

This is less a review, more a cogitation. Bear with me.

Up-front, the pull quote: "Thanks to Haven Chicago, Nikki Lynette's solo-ish Afrogoth musical Get Out Alive has dumped a jar of spiders on my eyeballs and that's all I'm going to see for a good bit, and I'm going to keep finding them in unexpected places for a good while after. This is a very, very good thing."

I'm not one for pull quotes, but, surely, the above is less odd than my other thought: "Nikki Lynette is no Stephen Sondheim. This is a very, very good thing."

In the eight months' bereavement since his death, mourners of the man and the art form have asked: "Will there be another Stephen Sondheim?"

The short answer is no.

The slightly longer answer: There will be no more Stephen Sondheims much in the way there will be no more David Merricks. The economics of commercial musical theatre are simply seismically different than they were fifty years ago. (This is to say nothing of our collective willingness to bear up with a David Merrick's psychological warfare.)

The slightly, hopefully more encouraging longer answer: What is also seismically different is how the musical is created, and by whom. Stephen Sondheim, like the other cosmopolitan New York Jewish boys (boys, pointedly) who form the majority bloc of the pre- and post-war Broadway scene, was the last breath of a generation where learning to play music was required if a household wanted anything in the way of entertainment. In turn, with gumption, a nascent facility with the piano or a nifty turn of phrase could land such a boy an audience with a producer who in an instant could decide whether or not to make or break "this kid's" career by tossing him that option he's had on his back burner, one option of many. Who knows, maybe with enough gags and gams, the thing'll sell on the Main Stem. Now, those kids are not sitting outside a producer's office, but in front of a computer, just as laser-focused on their digital audio workshops as they are on that "slime tutorial" just as they are on that new SoundCloud jam. Their audience, niche or broad, is just a "Submit" button away. The profit margin certainly exists somewhere, but sheer recognition has its currency, too.

Sondheim's observation that "content dictates form" is also fine for blue-sky thinking, but when the prospective "kid" has found an opportunity for a show, but they're armed with nothing but their life story and their DAW, and stuck in an economy that might cast some grey on those blue skies, it stands to reason that the inverse is true: form might just dictate content.

Hence, the solo memoir musical, a trend that just might be here to stay.

Lynette might not be the firstest to arrive at this new format—she's certainly no kid—but, as a Black adult who's made the rounds talking about mental health, she's certainly gotten there with the mostest.

Maybe I should've led with that.

What did she have to get there?

A compelling life story, for one, and, perhaps just as importantly, a recognition of what's worth telling, and all told very well. In a fleet ninety-ish minutes, you'll hear what you need to hear to understand why this cracklingly vivacious artist at one point felt that suicide was a logical conclusion.

That the songs are steel-trap bops is a bonus. (Lynette and music producer Matt Hennessy find just the right balance between slick club polish and lo-fi honesty.)

High style: designers Eleanor Kahn (scenic), Anna Wooden (costume), Gabrielle Strong (lights), Brett Ashleigh (sound), and Chris Owens (projections, with Lynette)—among so many, many others—have fashioned a chapel out of one of the Den Theatre's more modest spaces, something like a model's catwalk down the middle of Our Lady of Doxepine. Not a scrap is to waste.

Intelligence. Levity. Intelligent levity, at that, which is the best kind. You will not hear the phrase "cellular turnover" the same way again.

Fluidity. Between Lynette's backup ensemble (Keeley Morris and Jacinda Ratcliffe, co-choreographers), the house DJ (Jason "P1" Lloyd), and assuredly her co-directors (Lucky Stiff and Roger Ellis), we're kept aloft and bobbing (and nodding) our heads even while swimming through murky depths, never lost for air.

If these things are not what the musical has always needed...

Risks? One certainly hopes that the performers have constitutions of steel so that recounting these traumas is not tantamount to reopening the same vein again and again. If Lynette has a constitution like she has pipes...

Quibbles? Some might suspect the ending—helped along by words from Spike Lee, of all people—a tad pat. One person's patness might just be another's moment of clarity, when everything does become that simple.

Hopes? Assuming a commercial future is in the cards, Lynette will have to fight like hell to preserve that lo-fi honesty. Or maybe it'll play just as well with a full symphony orchestra backing her up. Who can say?

Certainties? Stephen Sondheim may be gone, and the content and form of the musical are inexorably changing, but Nikki Lynette knows that a musical never hurts for a kickline.

Maybe I should've led with that.

But don't look to me to lead. Look to Nikki. And listen.

Get Out Alive plays through August 6th at the Den Theatre's Bookspan Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. For tickets or more information, please call (773) 697-3830 or visit havenchi.org.