The Notebook The Musical

By Joseph Cervelli

While I never read Nicholas Sparks' huge best seller "The Notebook," I loved every moment of the beautifully moving film of the same title. 

The musical version of the novel at the Schoenfeld Theatre which is based not on the film but on the book adapted by Bekah Brunstetter is sad to say a let down. It does not help that the score with bland music and trite lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson does nothing to enhance the storyline nor move things along.

The show begins promising enough with the Older Noah (Dorian Harewood) staying in an Extended Care Facility to be with his  (no spoiler here) wife Older Allie (a wonderful performance by Maryann Plunkett) who is suffering from Alzheimer's. He reads to her from a journal which she wrote as her disease started to take hold. Besides the serious moments in the journal about love there are also some amusing ones. Harewood is good but for some reason I did not find his performance as touching as I would have expected.  Still the last scene was very well done and he came into his own at that moment. Plunkett was outstanding in every way as Allie. Her mood swings so typical of Alzheimer's patients and the blank look one moment and then recognition of Noah was superbly and realistically rendered.

We are introduced to the Younger Noah (John Cardoza) splashing in the water (action takes place in a coastal town in the Mid-Atlantic) with the Younger Allie's (Jordan Tyson.) Both of these performers are excellent and have a great career ahead of them. They are believable and their voices are strong and lovely. Yet, too bad, they don't have a better score to sing. Lyrics like "It's sadness and it's joy; it's light and then it's dark...." are banal.   I love sentimental stories and songs but this particular score just felt much too saccharine and the music undistinguished. We also meet Allie's friend Georgie (Dorcas Leung) and Noah's friend Fin (Carson Stewart.) While both are very good somehow they feel more like fillers to the story than anything else

Ally's parents do not approve of Noah for he works at a lumber yard while Allies dad who is a successful maker of planes (Charles E. Wallace) and the same for her her mom (Andrea Burns). The mother just feels he is like any other boy wanting one thing only. Think we have heard that line before in so many other shows. 

When Noah joins the armed forces his letters to Allie are intercepted by her mom and Allie thinks he was killed while Noah just thinks she is no longer interested.  

We are now introduced to the the Middle Noah (Ryan Vasquez) and his counterpart Allie (Joy Woods). If Brunstetter had, perhaps, not kept segueing from the middle couple  back to the younger ones and vice versa we might have been more taken with the characters. It was very difficult to feel anything for their  plights with the way the book suddenly jumps from each of them back to the older couple. While middle Allie is now engaged she flies back where she spent the summer first meeting Noah and goes back to the house that Noah wanted to renovate since he was a young man. She then finds out about the missing letters. She decides to go back home but here something felt off kilter. She is boarding the plane and then the next scene she is with Noah. Then you see her again with Noah but only now with luggage. 

Even before this scene just mentioned this is where the musical becomes disjointed which is very surprising considering an accomplished director like Michael Greif is at the helm. Unless co-director Schele Williams had this in mind.  And having so many characters intertwining with each other in one ensemble scene all singing simultaneously lessens the effect of the musical and does not work dramatically. Instead, their particular relationships become too superficial. 

Both Vasquez and Woods are outstanding performers with star quality. I could easily see Vasquez in a revival of the shamefully underrated "The Bridges of Madison County" and Woods a lead in a musical written with her in mind. 

What is strange is that the Younger Noah kept speaking about how his renovations of an old neighborhood  house will be perfect for Ally and him. So, when middle Allie goes back and sees what Noah has completed you may wonder what indeed has been done. As designed by David Zinn all you see basically is just the framework of the inside of a house. Surely, something could have been done to make it look like he had spent years working on his dream home. It looks like he just moved in. 

Katie Spelman is listed as the choreographer though I found very little if any dancing. 

The cast is indeed terrific but the musical is lacking in so many departments which is truly unfortunate.

PHOTOS: Juliana Cervantes

Tickets are available at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre 236 West 45th Street.