Called a musical thriller, 'Proxy' doesn’t even approximately meet that billing

Carisa Gonzalez and Tessa Dettman.

When it comes to critiquing brand-spanking-new musicals, I’d like to think Underscore Theatre’s prescriptive philosophy (as opposed to proscriptive) has worn off on me. Therefore, I hesitate to suggest making cuts to things that didn't add up. Or, at least, I don’t think of them as cuts. It’s better to question what the writers were after when they lost track, and ask whether there’s a point in the material they can perhaps amplify or expand upon to reach that point more firmly.

In the case of their newest musical, Proxy, I’m actually hesitant. It’s a piece that needs cuts, really needs them. So much so, perhaps, that they would reveal just how strangely timid and anemic the musical is, deep down.

You wouldn’t think as much from a pitch like this: Fifteen years ago, our lead Vanessa (Carisa Gonzalez) was stabbed and left for dead by her best childhood friend Ronnie. Now a stagnating clickbait writer on the skids, Vanessa’s going back home to interview Ronnie to find closure, save her job, maybe patch things up with her family.

And this is loosely based on the Slender Man stabbings, a thing that actually freaking happened. And we have something of a familiar name: Alexander Sage Oyen, who pops up every so often as a name to watch in contemporary MT. And “punk rock?” We’re sold on a gut-punching evening. But the writers end up burying the lede at every turn. With such a crazy hook, teeming with possibilities, they end up tip-toeing around the rabbit hole.

Most of the first act is spent setting up the estranged dynamic of Vanessa’s family: that is, mother Martha (Jenny Rudnick), who still tries to dote on her; stoner brother Sean (Kyle Kite); and a father whose funeral Vanessa did not attend. Fair enough—in a musical about going home again, you do need to go home. If you’re shrewd, you can set all that up in one song. Maybe two. Certainly not six, especially if one of those is, in effect, Martha asking Vanessa to pick up ice cream from Sonic Drive-In. Or especially if half of Sean’s songs are attenuated pot jokes.

Or maybe, a big maybe, you can have songs like this if their apparent normalcy is a cover, sung through gritted teeth and desperate eyes. Sadly, Sage Oyen, at least here, distressingly does little to break the wholly placid, wholly earnest four-four-time soft-pop sound that defines the “contemporary MT” stereotype. “Punk rock”, this ain’t. The few songs that do stand out—like “Fake IDs,” a song about taking a bad idea and making it worse—have a jagged swagger that throw all the syrup into sharp relief.

If the music isn’t propelling things, how about Doug (Michael Meija), Vanessa’s boss / on-again-off-again boyfriend? He’s supposed to be a devil on Vanessa’s shoulder; a ruthless pusher who’ll toss around her sanity like a poker chip to save his own ass. Really, he’s a pushover. (The business model that their clickbait site DougFeed—DougFeed!—is also ill-defined, so this ticking clock is missing a few cogs. There’s a board somewhere that’s apparently hunky-dory with the duo’s disappearing / reappearing journalistic integrity.)

So that just leaves Ronnie, our rabbit hole. We’ve made it all the way through the first act, we’re ready for Ronnie. Tessa Dettman brings the blank smile and uneasy serenity that’s called for, but also reels as she tells of the manifestation—the Proxy, the Faceless Man, she calls it— that drove her to do that horrible thing. Again, the writers get really close to diving head-first into some hard stuff…

But, again, maddeningly, they demur. They’re content to lean on the familiar tropes of mental illness: the blank smile, the uneasy serenity, the all-white wardrobe, the gory paintings horrific in their childish crudeness. Ideas that beg to be explored—like how Ronnie mistakenly believed Vanessa could see the Proxy, too, when Vanessa was innocently indulging in an imaginary friend—go unnoticed because it's now time for Vanessa's big Act One finale solo about How Everything She Knew Has Been Turned Upside-Down.

Such a huge upswell of emotion feels a little unearned, and not just because we’ve gone through a largely disposable first act and have another act to work through. More importantly, we’re no closer to learning who Vanessa, our narrator, really is as a person. It’s not just defense mechanisms; she hasn’t encountered an obstacle she didn’t undercut with an eyeroll. What is on paper a daunting struggle—to save her job, her relationship, and her personhood in one fell swoop—feels more like a great big annoyance. Her “I Want” song, where we expect her to take us into confidence, plays more like a “It Would Be Great If I Weren’t Stuck in This Jam” song, keeping us at arm’s length.

(If Vanessa is anything, it’s probably dense: in fifteen years, she never suspected mental illness?)

Also, why is Vanessa narrating? Are we her sounding board as she writes the story in her head? Are we her safety valve when, all of a sudden, what she wrote needs an overhaul? Really, her narration links the scenes together because the scenes themselves can't.

Gonzalez, for sure, has the chops to play a hip gunslinger in a musical thriller. Actually, I’d gladly see her and Kyle Kite in a musical thriller as siblings bonding over bad decisions. Hell, I’d like to see director Stephanie Rohr let loose on a musical thriller where her invention isn’t limited to a door trick. (It’s a very good door trick.)

In Proxy, though, everyone’s hamstrung. Skirting around the big dark hole,  they're saddled with Millennial quippery and Boomer bromides. Mother Martha—mother of the girl stabbed and left for dead at 12, remember—delivers a bewilderingly insensitive one-two punch when she implores Vanessa to consider how she feels about the whole situation, and with that consideration, to move on.

And no, the dead dad doesn’t figure into anything. His death isn’t tied to Vanessa’s tragedy. It was just textbook Stage IV Pathos Cancer.

Take Me, another new musical from this past year, was flabbergasting in its no-holds-barred loopiness, but it had a human heart jostling around in there. Proxy has the opposite problem: it’s nowhere near as wild a ride as the writers would have us believe, or as it ought to be if it wants to live. Cut? Yes. But will they find the heart within? Only if they’re willing to jump down the rabbit hole, into some deep, dark, scary realms of the human brain.

Underscore Theatre Company presents Proxy through November 24 at The Understudy, 4609 N. Clark Street, Chicago. More information and tickets are available here.