Lynne Robinson Alex Goley and Eryn Murman in “Standby.â€Sartre said hell is other people. Somehow limbo sounds even worse: It’s other people â€" in an airport terminal.
That is the central existential tenet of “Standby,†a heavy-handed musical about the afterlife running at the New York Musical Theater Festival.
Five recent suicide victims find themselves trapped in an interminable air terminal, where a St. Peter figure (a charismatic, if not totally necessary, Dwelvan David) reminds them that suicide is the worst of all the -cides, homi- and geno- included. The recently deceased at first appear to be strangers, only to realize their lives were actually intertwined in a sort of tortured theatrical version of Chutes and Ladders.They must decide among themselves who gets to leave supernatural “standby†and claim the two remaining boarding passes for a flight to heaven; those not chosen will of course jet somewhere a bit more tropical.
If this premise sounds overly literal, just wait: On their ballad-heavy journey to their final destination, the five must first sort through their “baggage.†And yes, by baggage I mean actual duffel bags, briefcases and purses, filled with tokens from their troubled pasts.
The show, aided by a competent cast and six-person band, badly wants to be insightful and uplifting but struggles under the weight of its own conceit. Alfred Solis wrote the book and lyrics with Mark-Eugene Garcia; Amy Baer and Keith Robinson were the composers.
Characters heave musical confession after musical confession at the audience, content to bathe us in their bathos even as they ignore the show’s flimsy and often inconsistent logic.
“Standby†continues through July 28 at the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theater, 480 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 352-3101, nymf.org.
