SUMMIT – Stories from real life can be just as engaging as those from a playwright’s imagination. Vivid Stage in Summit proved that with their latest production of “Gone Missing,” a collaborative piece of vignettes assembled by Steve Cosson from verbatim interviews by an ensemble theatre group, The Civilians, and music and lyrics by Michael Friedman. Ingenious staging and execution for the 90-minute production at Oakes Center is billed as a “whimsical documentary musical.” It was brought to fruition tenderly in the New Jersey premiere by director Joshua Schnetzer and musical director Dan Crisci.
A stark, bare set of dark blue and gray flats with four doorways and three-gun metal gray side chairs lead us into the world of dozens of characters who tell of loss in their lives. It might be something seemingly trivial or something significant. But for them, the loss is real. Just like actor Cynthia Nixon who is currently playing six characters in the Off-Broadway show, “The Seven Year Disappearance,” the six actors in this show play nearly 30 characters just through the changing of an accent, voice placement, or physical approach to the person.
The overarching visual that provides the glue to the string of interview snippets is a radio “On Air” neon sign, an old-fashioned microphone on a stand, and a format with an interviewer and an expert, Dr. Palinurus (Scott McGowan) who speaks about Atlantis, the mythological, fictional island mentioned in Plato’s works. Atlantis, from time to time is referenced to the effect of loss, what memory is, and what nostalgia signifies. Its weighty material is wrapped up in fun, and often dry humor. A sprinkling of cute choreography and movement breaks up the monologues. Music by keyboardist/ director Crisci, drums by Ginny Johnston, and guitar by multi-talented singer/actor Clark Carmichael provide the perfect accompaniment.
Actor Melody Stubbs, a recent Theatre Performance (Musical Theatre) graduate of Kean University, made her alma mater proud. One of her characters was Laura who had lost a black Gucci pump. Ms. Stubbs’ affectation of this jet-setting gal caused gales of laughter but then later, her character with the Caribbean accent whose loss of her palm pilot on 9/11 brought a catch to our collective throats. In her song “Hide and Seek,” she displays a range of emotions of a person looking for connection. “Why is no one seeking me?” she convincingly asks.
Likewise, heightened emotions are seen in the light moments. Mr. McGowan plays an effeminate New Yorker who lost his phone just as convincingly as his old person in the nursing home where he and fellow “senior citizen” Laura Ekstrand need to blame someone for their lost items. Their aides are their prime suspects. Mr. McGowan’s impressive rendition of the German number “Ich Traumt, Du Kamst An Mich” needed no subtitles.
Mr. Carmichael’s Southern drawl in talking about his lost dog is great fun and his singing of “Lost Horizon” is a master class in sensitivity. In contrast, one of the funniest songs was “Etch-a-Sketch” sung by the linguistically talented Becca Landis McLarty and backed up by the company. She switches accents from scene to scene faster than Clark Kent changed into Superman.
Two specific overlapping sketches were especially memorable: one with the three women talking about rings they had lost and their importance. Perfect, private moments were captured. The second was the two cops and a pet psychic with Thomas Vorsteg revisiting his role as a retired NYPD cop who sees humor in finding a partially mummified head.
Adorable, exaggerated staging of Ms. Ekstrand’s “The Only Thing Missing” echoed 1930s starlets who draped themselves in doorways to pose for the camera. Later, Ms. Ekstand’s character as the self-taught pet psychic has funny lines about conversing with animals, and her portrayal of the woman who gave away all her possessions “to let go of ego” was a standout.
The production shows that even though we try to hang onto things in our lives and our memories because they bring pleasure, ironically, the root word for “nostalgia” is pain.
