Review Roundup: A NEW BRAIN at Barrington Stage Company

What did critics think of Barrington Stage Company's production of William Finn’s 1998 musical A New Brain which is now playing through September 10, 2023 on BSC’s Boyd-Quinson Stage?

A New Brain features Adam Chanler-Berat (Broadway: Next to Normal, Peter and the Starcatcher; HBO Max: “Gossip Girl”; WTF: Animal Crackers) as Gordon, three-time Tony Award nominee Mary Testa (Broadway: Oklahoma!, 42nd Street; Off-Broadway: Bill Finn’s In Trousers; BSC: Sleepless Variations; WTF: Most Happy in Concert) as Mimi, Tally Sessions (Broadway: Company, Anastasia, Bill Finn’s Falsettos) as Dr. Jafar / Dad, Demond Green (Broadway: Sister Act; BSC: Funked Up Fairy Tales, Bill Finn’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) as The Minister, Dorcas Leung (Broadway: Miss Saigon; National Tour: Hamilton; BSC: Into the Woods) as Rhoda, Andy Grotelueschen (Broadway: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Tootsie) as Mr. Bungee, Salome B. Smith (Broadway: 1776) as Lisa, and Justine Horihata Rappaport (National Tour: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella) as Nancy, Darrell Purcell, Jr. (Signature Theatre: The Scottsboro Boys; Temple Theatre: Hairspray) as Roger, and Eliseo Roman (BSC: Fall Springs; Broadway: In The Heights, On Your Feet!) as Richard.

In A New Brain, Gordon can’t get past his writer’s block when a medical emergency forces him to reassess if his songs (or lack thereof) are more important than his family, his friends, or his partner. He needs to navigate a mean nurse, shelves of books and a bossy frog to get to the heart of his music.

A New Brain features music and lyrics by BSC Associate Artist William Finn (BSC: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Royal Family of Broadway), book by Finn and Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner James Lapine (Broadway: Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George), and direction by BSC Associate Artist Joe Calarco (BSC: Waiting for Godot, Into the Woods, Ragtime), with music direction by Vadim Feichtner (BSC: The Royal Family of Broadway; Broadway: Falsettos, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) and choreography by Chloe O. Davis (Paradise Square).

A New Brain was originally presented in 1998 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, where it won the 1999 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical. The largely autobiographical musical is about Finn’s life-threatening experience surviving a neurological brain condition.

A New Brain features design by Paige Hathaway, costume design by Debra Kim Sivigny, lighting design by Jason Lyons, and sound design by Ken Travis. Production Stage Manager is John Godbout.

Jeffrey Borak, The Berkshire Eagle: On the whole, “A New Brain” is undistinguished and hardly memorable. That having been said, Calarco, together with choreographer Chloe O. Davis and music director Vadim Feichtner, has put together a production that carries an appropriately bold, witty sense of the theatrical.

Bill Kellert, Nippertown: Director Joe Calarco does fine work keeping the story moving, giving Finn’s music and lyrics a certain lightness about them despite the stage being filled with strong, over-the-top characters. Paige Hathaway’s scenic design of a humongous light-up diagram of the brain never allows us to forget what the central point of the musical is about.

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