Brave new work

Yesterday, I caught the last performance of the in-development indie-rock musical "Fly By Night" at TheatreWorks, and you'd have to consult the program to believe the show was still being refined. It was so polished. I've rarely seen such a smooth combination of comedy and tragedy: in the script, the performances, the gorgeous music.

That's tough. Often a playwright tries to lighten the mood by dropping in an anvil of a joke, and ends up cheapening a tragic scene. Here, while I had a few minor critiques -- a plot point needed clarification, one scene could have been trimmed, the lyrics were sometimes hard to make out -- I sat riveted for nearly the entire show. And you don't often get to take part in such a long standing ovation, with the actors brought out for a second bow. I was sorry we weren't able to applaud all the writers: Will Connolly (who also played guitar in the show), Michael Mitnick and Kim Rosenstock.

I think that Meredith McDonough, who heads the New Works Festival, said in her curtain speech that the rehearsal period for this production was about three weeks. So, extra kudos for the actors. No weak links anywhere, but Ian Leonard was a standout as the nebbishy Harold McClam, the sandwich boy with a lovely tenor and a tenuous grasp on his soul mate in the year leading up to the New York City blackout of 1965. (The ongoing -- but never heavy-handed -- foreshadowing of the outage was one of the script's greatest strengths.)

Molly Bell of Los Altos deftly mixed humor and a lonesomeness as aspiring actress Daphne, paired with pipe-puffing playwright Mark Anderson Phillips, who was so powerful recently in TW's "Opus." Their perfectly ridiculous duet in the show-within-a-show about a torn pair of pants kept my companion snickering. ("Euripides, you pay for these!")

Also, a lovely, wistful turn by Kristin Stokes as waitress Miriam, and impressive shape-shifting by Wade McCollum as the Narrator, who morphed in and out of a host of characters throughout the afternoon. He's also starred in "I Am My Own Wife." Any actor who can take on that remarkable script can pretty much do anything.

Looking forward to seeing where the show goes next. With a musical in progress, you can't jump online and buy the finished CD, but some of the "Fly By Night" songs are on Will Connolly's MySpace page. Take a listen.

Pictured: Will Connolly in a photo from his MySpace page.