Constance Wu and Finn Wittrock bring horror, and audiences, to live L.A. theater with ‘2:22’
With a production of “Rent Your Own Damn Skull, Charlie Brown.” This week, we’ve been watching
From the outside, it appeared as if “Rent Your Own Damn Skull, Charlie Brown” was going to be the story of its namesake. Instead, director Stephen Sondheim and a creative team in full control of the music, lyrics and a show that will certainly challenge a few notions of live musical theater, “2:22” (at the Belasco Theater), the musical, did something quite different.
This production, which opened Friday night at the Belasco, is about a murder mystery with some sort of spiritual undertones that takes place in a house where a murder occurs and where a mother (Wu), daughter (Wittrock) and son (Wittrock) are involved in the investigation. It’s a tight narrative, and the production’s production values and sound mixing were excellent. But it was also, on a purely technical level, not as good as one would have hoped.
At a certain point in the production, the story took a turn that was a direct result of the creative team’s choice to replace the production’s original house band, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with a small ensemble of musicians from the orchestra’s children’s choir and students at the Music School at the University of the Arts, Los Angeles. While there was no question that the orchestra’s performance of Haydn’s “Fantasia” would have done justice to this production, the replacement of the orchestra with children’s choir and students, in the hands of conductor Robert Eichenbaum and the members of the ensemble, made for an entirely different experience with the material.
And it was one that took the stage with the cast and audience in a different way.
The cast of “2:22” had some of their own problems to deal with, too. There were a few moments in the first act when it seemed as if the group of mostly young musicians were not having much fun. The script had the musicians performing like children, singing and giggling throughout the