From Tony Award-winning composer JASON ROBERT BROWN (PARADE) comes a timely new musical about two talented young journalists on increasingly diverging paths. Set in the late 1990s amid a rapidly changing media landscape we meet a fast-rising journalist, Ethan Dobson, and an assistant copy editor, Robin Martinez, at the revered magazine The Connector. In a world that values the next big sensation, Ethan’s writing prowess and ambition force him to confront how far he’ll go for the ultimate scoop and Robin to consider how far she’ll go to stop him.
With a book by JONATHAN MARC SHERMAN, THE CONNECTOR will feature Brown leading the band at each performance and reuniting with THE LAST FIVE YEARS and SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD director DAISY PRINCE.
Brown’s score, one of his best, has a decidedly ’90s groove, from the plaintive “Now What”—in which Conrad muses on the state of the news industry—to the twangy “So I Came to New York,” a duet that allows Robin to slam her home state (“Everyone’s an asshole in Texas…”) and Ethan to trash his (“Everyone’s a scumbag in Jersey…”). Musical numbers led by Fergie Philippe and Max Crumm, as Ethan’s dubious sources, give the musical space to breathe away from the office. And Jessica Molaskey and Mylinda Hull, as fact-checkers on Ethan’s trail, are so good that you wish they had even more to do, perhaps in a two-act version of this intermission-less show. But then again, in deference to their characters, this particular story might best be served by just-the-facts-ma’am brevity.
From a musical standpoint, actor Max Crumm (as a Scrabble champ) knocks out the song "Success" just as actor Fergie Philippe (as a hooded whistleblower) seizes his showstopper, “Wind in the Sails.” The show also boasts an intoxicating prayer number, which highlights the violinist Todd Reynolds as well as the thought-provoking link between stories and faith. In an intermission-free 105 minutes, these numbers – career gold for Brown – overcome the sleepiness in the musical’s first hour, when the Ethan/Robin dynamic almost stales.
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