I’ve been a passionate defender of Ingrid Michaelson’s unfairly maligned and overlooked score for “The Notebook” ever since I first heard her song suite when this adaptation of the much-read Nicholas Sparks novel was first produced in 2022 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Sure, it breaks some Broadway rules. But there is something raw and honest about the way the soulful indie-pop writer-singer translates deep personal emotions into music, especially those feelings riven by doubt and insecurity, inevitable in complicated relationships. If you know the book or the film, you will be aware that the story here starts with a rich girl’s summer romance with a boy from the figurative wrong side of the tracks and encompasses the end of their love affair, when she has dementia, and he has to sing of losing another piece of her every day. Few songwriters (beyond Tom Kitt, anyway) are able to put memory loss into a set of music and lyrics. But Michaelson can, and does.
The first national tour of “The Notebook,” now at the James M. Nederlander Theatre for a couple of weeks, finally gets the casting right and, frankly, it is transformative.
This is not unusual in my experience. When producers put together tours (and I speak only of Equity union tours, the first time around), they often have learned from their Broadway mistakes and directors typically get more freedom to cast who they really want, regardless of their public profile.
I’d argue that two other factors make this tour especially interesting. One is that “The Notebook” began in an era (way back in 2022) when the Broadway music was tying itself in knots trying to deal with a variety of pressures involving race and sex.
As a result, to my mind, the overly tentative initial Chicago and New York productions were insufficiently sensual, when we all know that the movie being adapted by Bekah Brunstetter mostly is famous for a sexy love scene in the rain. Finally, one can now believe that the crucial “Middle” Noah and Allie (the show uses three actors to portray the two lovers at different ages) are hopelessly physically attracted to each other. Alysha Deslorieux and Ken Wulf Clark show us that, building on a sweet start from the younger Kyle Mangold and Makena Jackson, I believe new to the cast in Chicago.
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The initial conceit from co-directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams was to cast both white and Black actors without consistent racial logic. The idea, I think, was to make the statement that the inner feelings of soulmates transcended such things. At the time, I thought it was a bold choice to have actors of different races play the same character at different ages and I said so. But there were two problems I didn’t foresee. One is that the idea confused audiences and the other, I think, is that it asked actors to remove themselves too far from the specificity and grounding that actors need.
Now, the show has cast three Black performers as Allie, allowing all three to fully inhabit her identity as the child of a white mother and a Black father, with three white actors playing Noah, whose parents we never see. The story, which here begins in the 1960s and moves to the present, becomes an inter-racial love story rooted in the fraught second half of the 20th century, and lives and breathes as such.
And now everyone in the audience understands what is going on. Not the case on Broadway, alas.
The older Noah and Allie are beautifully realized by Beau Gravitte, deeply moving in a gruff kind of way, and Sharon Catherine Brown, who I think honors those of our loved ones who suffer from dementia. I don’t claim this is a musical from a literary or cinematic masterpiece, of course, and that canvas certainly has its constraints. But there is no doubt in my mind that the musical ennobles the previously more limited material, which is not often the case when Hollywood movies are scored and sung.
One other point. There’s a moment in this show where Noah’s son, played (along with several other roles) by Jerome Harmann-Hardeman, bursts with affection and concern for his dad; it’s a wrenching moment that lasts for about three seconds, but I didn’t see it at all before, and it’s evidence that the directors were open to new discoveries.
So. This excellent touring show is the best way so far to see and feel “The Notebook.” Especially if you are a fan of dancing in the rain with your heart’s desire.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
Review: “The Notebook” (4 stars)
When: Through Aug 16
Where: James M. Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St.
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Tickets: $37-$127 at 312-977-1700 and www.broadwayinchicago.com