'Stereophonic' at the Pantages can't hit Broadway's high notes

“Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s heralded play that won 5 Tony Awards including champion play, is acceptable for its Los Angeles close-up.

The archetypal nationalist circuit production, which opened Wednesday astatine the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, seems close astatine location successful the euphony superior of the world. The play astir a 1970s stone set connected the brink of superstardom takes spot successful signaling studios successful Sausalito and L.A., wherever the Laurel Canyon vibe is ne'er retired of sight.

The ocular crispness of this L.A. premiere goes a agelong mode toward dispelling doubts that the Pantages is the incorrect venue for this ensemble drama. If there’s a problem, it isn’t the cavernousness of the theater. The production, gleaming with play details connected a acceptable by David Zinn that gives america wide views into some the dependable and power rooms, comfortably inhabits the show space, astatine slightest from the position of a decent orchestra seat.

The play, which includes archetypal euphony from Will Butler, the Grammy-winning creator formerly of Arcade Fire, has a dependable each spot arsenic robust arsenic 1 of the blockbuster musicals that regularly passes done the Pantages. The songs, crushed by the actors astatine apical volume, are Butler’s indie stone re-creation of cuts for a part-British, part-American set that bears specified a striking resemblance to Fleetwood Mac that a suit brought by a erstwhile dependable technologist and shaper of the radical was yet settled.

Adjmi, similar Shakespeare, takes his inspiration wherever helium finds it. And similar the Bard, helium makes his sources his own, alchemizing the worldly for caller ends.

The touring accumulation of “Stereophonic” makes wide conscionable however integral the archetypal formed was to the occurrence of the play.

(Julieta Cervantes)

Unfolding successful 1976 and 1977, “Stereophonic” offers a fly-on-the-wall position of a set astatine a crossroads. While signaling a caller medium top-heavy with expectations, the radical falls prey to romanticist conflicts and self-destructive spirals, to toxic jealousies and seething insecurities. The imaginable of fame magnifies pathologies that person been intensifying implicit time.

Diana (Claire DeJean) is the Stevie Nicks of the band. Beautiful, achingly susceptible and awash successful lyrical talent, she is entangled successful a narration with Peter (Denver Milord), the Lindsey Buckingham of the group, who strives for philharmonic perfection nary substance the cost.

Their transportation is arsenic professionally enriching arsenic it is personally destructive. Diana’s ambition is matched by her self-doubt. She’s susceptible to a Svengali yet doesn’t privation anyone to archer her however to constitute her songs.

Peter, angrily competitive, can’t assistance resenting the earthy easiness of Diana’s talent, adjacent arsenic it’s her opus from their archetypal medium that has enactment the set backmost successful the spotlight. His genius is ferociously exacting portion hers seems to outpouring people from her soul.

Artistically they beryllium connected each other, but the hostility betwixt them is unsustainable. And arsenic the play makes clear, there’s nary mode to support their idiosyncratic lives retired of the studio.

DeJean and Milord are the astir captivating performers successful the ensemble. The different actors are coagulated but this touring accumulation makes wide conscionable however integral the archetypal formed was to the occurrence of the play.

Daniel Aukin’s production, which had its New York premiere astatine Playwrights Horizons successful 2023 earlier moving to Broadway the pursuing year, hasn’t mislaid its assured flow. The storytelling is lucidly laid out. But the tantalizing peculiarities of the characters person been whittled down.

The British set members endure the worst of it. Emilie Kouatchou’s Holly moves the quality distant from the evident Christine McVie reference, but her relation has go vaguer and little central. Cornelius McMoyler’s Simon, the drummer and weary manager, fills the measure successful each respect but gravitas, which indispensable beryllium successful spot if the character’s eventual confrontation with Peter is to person the indispensable payoff.

No 1 could vie with Will Brill, who won a Tony for his strung-out portrayal of Reg, a deranged guiltless whose addictions and dysfunctions make farcical havoc for the band. Christopher Mowod can’t rather endow this “sad antheral successful a blanket,” arsenic Simon dubs his bundled-up bandmate, with the aforesaid level of fey madness that Brill was capable to entertainingly supply.

These casting differences wouldn’t beryllium worthy noting if it weren’t for their interaction connected a play that distinguishes itself by its observational detail. Everything is conscionable a small much obvious, including the 2 American dependable guys bearing the brunt of the creator temperaments moving riot successful the studio.

Jack Barrett’s Grover, the dependable technologist who lied astir his inheritance to get the job, sands disconnected immoderate of the character’s unsmooth edges successful a much straightforwardly appealing mentation of the quality than Eli Gelb’s bracing portrayal successful New York. Steven Lee Johnson’s Charlie, the dorky adjunct dependable engineer, is an amiable weirdo, though I missed the mode Andrew R. Butler played him astir similar a abstraction alien successful New York.

The play has been edited, but it’s inactive a spot of an endurance test. Art isn’t casual for the characters oregon for us. But the effort isn’t successful vain.

Adjmi’s overlapping dialog and gaping silences, orchestrated successful a neo-Chekhovian style, renders the invisible creator process visible. By the extremity of the play, the tumultuous quality play down originative brilliance emerges successful poignant, transcendent glory.