I was very much looking forward to seeing and hearing Luke Di Sommas’s new musical, commissioned by the Christchurch Arts Festival, especially considering the consistently positive comments that I’ve read and heard about his previous musical That Bloody Woman, for which, unfortunately, I haven’t been in the same town at the same time to actually see for myself.

However, I regret that I can find little to be positive about in The Things Between Us. The show’s one-act format exploring relationships puts me very much in mind of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Passion, which I saw during its opening week on Broadway twenty-three years ago and which, like most of the audience for its short-lived run (in Sondheim and Broadway terms), I found dramatically and musically unconvincing. 

Another similarity between these two shows is the predominance of ostinato or riff-based musical accompaniments that wear very thin after a short time and begin to sound like little more than vamps. Harmonies are easy and predictable without building and releasing tension. Overused tricks like the sudden disparities in rhythms and dynamics, free-wheeling syncopations and unprepared key shifts, that became stylistic features of musical theatre in the 1980s and ’90s, tend to sound rather clichéd when used as replacements for inventive harmonies or fresh melodic ideas.

Some might argue that the music makes use of minimalist techniques, but the layering of opposing rhythmic motifs and the consequent building of textural tension that distinguishes the best minimalist music is not part of Di Somma’s musical vocabulary. 

Some individual songs in the show’s unbroken musical course show signs of promise. One in particular, ‘The Door is Creaking Open’ (my own title in the absence of any song listing), starts to build to an impressive climax before being cut-off without reaching its potential expressive pay-off. The same is true of ‘My Corner of the Forest’ but here the culmination is deliberately foreshortened as a way of expressing the singer’s feelings of unfulfillment.

The lyrics throughout the show are often clever, gently humorous and effective. In general, the few ensemble numbers work better than the solos, which sometimes betray less than perfect intonation despite the evident experience of the energetic and committed cast.  

As a piece of theatre, the show’s main problem for me is the lack of clearly developed characters with whom we can empathise and identify. The show is more about the nature of relationships than about the individuals involved, with the result that the people emerge as stereotypes rather than real human beings. And the text doesn’t explore anything new or anything that hasn’t been explored more effectively before.

Gay relationships are certainly nothing new on stage or screen, and the frequent use of obscenities (swear words, foul language, four-letter words – whatever you prefer to call them) has become pervasive in the theatre, including stage musicals such as The Book of Mormon, Billy Elliot, Jersey Boys, etc. etc.

Things have certainly changed since 1957 when Sondheim’s original final line in the lyrics of West Side Story’s ‘Officer Krupke’ was changed by CBS to “Krup You!” And while, in some cases, the use of such language may, as writers and producers invariably claim, reflect reality, without believable characters and convincing dramatic motivation, it comes across as merely gratuitous and loses its ability to shock.

Signs in the foyer of the venue warn the audience about partial nudity (two men in underwear), language and adult themes but looking back on the wide range of theatre that I’ve seen in the last few years, The Things Between Us doesn’t even come close to needing such a warning.

The concept of this musical is centred on intimate relationships and, while Papa Hou is a great performance space, this production’s large raised stage and heavily miked sound counts against that intimacy.  The opening night audience was positive and enthusiastic whenever able to demonstrate such responses (we all go to the theatre wanting a good experience), but I’m not able to report on the reception at the end of the show.

Unfortunately, I miss the last few minutes because, when the performance extends past its advertised seventy-minute duration, I need to leave for another assignment, rushing across town, negotiating my way through orange cones and road closures, parking illegally and reaching my seat in the nick of time for a 9.00pm show. I was originally scheduled to review the previous night’s preview performance of The Things Between Us, but this was changed at short notice at the request of the producers.

Like many musicals, even the most well-known, the potential of The Things Between Us could well be realised through workshops and revisions but, as it stands, it doesn’t live up to the expectations raised by Luke Di Somma’s past work. 

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