Dave Malloy’s “Octet” is an a capella musical structured around intricate, eight-part vocal harmonies and a show that would challenge the most experienced of Chicago’s musical houses. But Raven Theatre, a venerable North Side company located in an old supermarket, has never produced a musical before in its 43-year history. For Raven to pull off the Midwestern premiere of this fiendishly difficult piece at this extraordinarily high level is nothing short of remarkable.
The casting is adroit, director Keira Fromm’s staging hits just the right balance between emotional intensity and unpretentious simplicity, the singing under musical director Nick Sula (one of this theater town’s biggest assets) is top-notch throughout and, last but by no means least, the crucial sound design and reinforcement by Christopher Kriz and Hannah Kwak is superior to what I often hear at far larger theaters.
Simply put, “Octet,” which tells the stories of eight members of a technology addiction support group, is one of the highlights of the theater season so far and absolutely not to be missed by lovers of intimate musicals.
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Malloy is best known in theater circles for his musical “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,” often described as “electro-pop” or even “electro-pop opera.” Malloy is known for layering live vocals with pre-recorded tracks to create an uncommonly immersive musical experience.
Nothing is pre-recorded, though, in “Octet,” which was first produced in pre-COVID 2019 at the Signature Theatre in New York, and later in Berkeley, Washington and Toronto. The show unfolds in real time as we serve as flies on the wall for a therapy group for people who cannot untether themselves from their devices. They testify about their experiences and challenges one by one, in the time-honored Alcoholics Anonymous structure.
These solo “shares” (as they are called, along with references to “hymns” and “rituals”) form the substance of the show with only brief spoken intercessions; in each number, the remaining cast members provide the harmonics and the rhythm as the baton is passed from addict to addict.
Technology addiction, we learn, comes with several potential adjectives, including sexual (to pornography), social (to Facebook and the like), recreational (gaming), financial (money) and informational (what you are likely doing now, unless you reading this on paper). And in these various songs, deeply personal and sometimes primal, the diverse array of characters explore the why and the wherefore of their addictions — and thus you end up with a musical meditation on weaning oneself away. That said, Malloy’s lyrics also are sophisticated enough to also take a look at the inherently self-absorbed nature of addiction itself.
Some subsection of my readers (and I imagine you often as I write) probably would see this show as so much navel-gazing psychobabble, a cappela or otherwise, and resist some very Chekhovian / Malloy-esque lines like “every second I’m unaware of life is a second I am giving over to death.” So it might not be for you. Still, I think it will be.
Malloy surely intends audiences to feel that tension towards these characters because he wants to explore the line between personal culpability (as in, phone and laptops turn off) and external malfeasance writ large by Big Tech on humans ill-equipped to resist.
I constantly felt that push and pull. Thanks to some very deep and gorgeous dives by this entire eight-sided cast of Joryhebel Ginorio, Neala Barron, Grace Steckler, Teressa LaGamba, Elliot Esquivel, Jordan Golding, Sam Shankman and Ryder Dean McDaniel, you get this sense of humans defiantly swimming in a tech soup capable of drowning out both their voices and their hearts.
One character calls out the “lonely ugly chaos of the internet” and, well, who could disagree with that characterization?
Interestingly, Lin-Manuel Miranda recently announced plans to direct a movie based on this very piece (Malloy is penning the screenplay). That should be really something, although much surely can be said for first seeing and hearing this “Octet” in an intimate room, with Chicago actors going for broke in near-perfect harmony.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
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Review: “Octet” (4 stars)
When: Through June 7
Where: Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St.
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Tickets: $45 at raventheatre.com