David and I saw A Little More Alive tonight at Barrington Stage 2. It has book, lyrics, and music all written by Nick Blaemire. Mr. Blaemire could take a few lessons from Jule Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, whose Bells Are Ringing we saw just a few days ago.
I was apparently born about 50 years too soon to appreciate the kind of thing Mr. Blaemire considers 'Musical Theatre'. Whereas Jule Styne takes a lyric from Comden and Green and sets it to a melody, Mr. Blaemire writes a line of dialogue and adds notes to it. That's not quite the same thing. Gian Carlo Menotti used to write both the words and music with great success. I'm just too old to get this Millennial version of Musical Theatre, I guess.
In tonight's effort, the plot centers around two sons returning home for their mother's funeral. One is a pothead and the other a successful businessman. They discover letters proving that their mother had an affair during their childhood. It goes downhill from there.
Van Hughes 
Daniel Jenkins
The three men, Van Hughes, Daniel Jenkins, and Michael Tacconi all had good voices but were forced to holler their songs over a much-too-loud orchestra. Since everything was being amplified, this is the fault of the director who should have balanced this in rehearsals.
Michael TacconiThe two women, Nicolette Robinson and Emily Walton joined in the general melee of shout-singing, producing a lot of sound but almost no understandable words. When one shout-sings (I just made this phrase up), it is not possible to hear the text, especially when the orchestra is drowning out the voices.
In case you haven't figured out as yet, I didn't like this show.
The actors were all good in representing the characters they were portraying but were sunk with the music (??) that they had to shout-sing.
If this is the new era of what is considered musical theatre, I give up.
