Review: MIDNIGHT STREET at Theatre Row

Midnight Street debuted at Theatre Row this month, bringing the audience into the seedy underbelly of New York City. The dramatic musical hosts a small cast of three, focusing on the life of prostitute Danielle (Emily Afton) as she claims the midnight streets for her own.

This musical is simple in regards to stage design and costumes that do not change (which works), but surprisingly neither do the characters. While most characters learn or grow throughout the duration of a story, Danielle does not. Nothing seems to faze her even when murder is on the table. It's hard to relate to Danielle because the audience is never quite sure just who she is, even at the very end we are left to wonder.

When Danielle speaks, she is hard and sarcastic, blatant about the men and women she used in return for money. But when she sings (and her singing is quite stunning), she takes on another role. Here she is raw, sad, and lonely. It is there that we see a glimpse of a real human hiding under all that lace and lipstick. But once the song is over, Danielle is back to her old tricks (no pun intended) and boldly pokes fun of her empathetic side, dismissing her heartfelt songs of love and loss with a wave of a hand. You want to like Danielle, you want to sympathize with her, but her attitude paired with the mystery of never quite knowing her, gets in the way.

While the musical is mostly Danielle's monologue, there is an exception when the other two characters, Anitpas (Rafael Jordan) and King Saul (Lenny Wolpe) come in. They don't have large roles, only making their way into the story closer to the end, but they add more evil to an already dark tale. They give her a choice and threaten her not to refuse, but their tactics lack any real suspense. Danielle being Danielle, showed very little emotion during her interaction with the men, and the story concluded too abruptly for any of us to invest much time on them.

Midnight Street is playing now until June 22nd.

(Photo courtesy Daniel DeMello Public Relations)