#crashlight

Thursday, August 25th, 2016. 7:00pm. Cherry Lane Theatre.

Lindsay Gitter (Rian) Andy Dispensa (Marcus Pressi) Caleb Schaaf (Anthony) Rylee Doiron (Jade) Lynnsey Lewis (Beth) Robert DiDomenico (Caulan) Chandler James (Briar) Alexis Ebers (Ensemble) Ivy Idzakovich (Ensemble) Marisa Roper (Ensemble) Rachel Ferretti (Dancer) Cara Treacy (Dancer) Kaitlyn Moise (Dancer) 

Celeste Makoff (Book, Music, Lyrics, Director) Kaitlyn Moise (Co-Producer, Choreographer) Trevor Bumgarner (Musical Arrangements, Orchestrations, Co-story Development) Shirlee Idzakovich (Costume Design) Kaitlyn Miller (Stage Manager) Elizabeth Earhart (Production Assistant) Maria Puglisi (Assistant Choreographer) Aaron Duffy (Film Direction and Production Design) Sean Kiely (Co-Sound Design/Film Sound Design) Ian O'Loughlin (Co-Sound Design) Matthew Fischer (Sound Board Operator Adam Crinson (Scenic Design) Robert Weismann (Lighting Design) Paul Nunez (Graphic Design)

Crashlight wants to be so much more. A brilliant idea with a lot of heart, it begins with a propaganda film clip of the villain of the piece, Marcus Pressi. The rest of the musical is dotted with these amateurishly-projected but atmospheric video clips that provide background and history to this dystopian YA novel which has been thrown up on an off-Broadway stage and given music and lyrics. A melancholy and hopeful but sloppy tale, it feels like someone didn’t think through the nuts and bolts of the idea before putting the show together.

The world created within Crashlight intrigues, but the audience never receives enough background information to fully invest themselves in this dual society. With so little focus on the stakes that our protagonist Rian faces, we never actually get to care about this society and these characters. Between a unmemorable score that all starts to bleed together and sound alike after the first few songs, a script that confuses or glosses over as much as it explains, and a few recurring modern dance interludes that serve no point within the narrative as a whole, overall the audience is left unfulfilled.

A lukewarm cast tries their best to breathe life into one-dimensional characters, but most of the script falls flat. The standout performance lies in Andy Dipensa’s Marcus Pressi, whose brilliantly warm and likeable dictator makes you wonder why this guy was so awful… until a brutal torture scene halfway through the second act makes you realize just a little why this charismatic leader is such a bad person.

The contrast in lighting and set establishes the atmosphere and themes of the musical quite nicely. The stage evokes Crashlight’s two worlds well; split down the middle, one half bedecked in the golden almost-too-bright lights and colors of the highlands, the other half stripped bare to show the dark, dreary, sickening darkness of the lowlands.

As the final ultimately hopeful and inspiring scenes played out on stage, I found myself wanting more, but not in a good way. Crashlight takes a welcome non-cliche turn towards the end, but by that point it’s too late for the audience to care much about what happens to these characters.