Review: SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD at Olney Theatre Center

Olney Theatre Center’s outdoor festivities continue undaunted by this season’s intense heat with a concert staging of Jason Robert Brown’s Songs For a New World. Luckily enough, conditions for the first of two performances could not have been more favorable, as a cool and breezy summer night set the stage perfectly for a laid back performance of the cult favorite song cycle. 

30 years on from its first production, Brown’s debut musical remains a darling of regional and amateur theaters thanks to its flexible and minimal cast, pit, and production requirements. That all looks well and good on paper, but what it doesn’t account for is how notoriously difficult Brown’s music is to play, to sing, and even to act. 

This interesting little contradiction is a defining quirk of Brown’s place in the broader musical theater landscape. Small, easy to produce works like Songs For a New World and The Last Five Years have made him incredibly popular among theater kids and community theaters throughout the country, but Brown’s music was very explicitly not written to be easy or accommodating. 

His songs, especially early on in his career, are virtuosic, featuring complex harmonies, unintuitive syncopations, and tremendous range. And that’s not just vocal range — Brown’s penchant for telling full-length parables complete with twists and arcs frequently requires performers to embody multiple characters, noticeably transform through personal discoveries, and more all in the space of mere minutes. 

Olney Theatre hasn’t shied away from the challenge, and they've recruited some top tier talent, largely native Marylanders, to meet it: Katie Mariko Murray (Frozen), Michael Mainwaring (Swept Away), Florrie Bagel (Parade), Rayshun LaMarr (NBC’s The Voice), and Adelina Mitchell (Wicked) — each an absolute vocal powerhouse. The cast was rounded out by the four-person ensemble of Alex De Bard, Crystal Freeman, Dylan Arrendondo, and Ryan Klieft, who elevated the evening with their rich harmonies. Klieft also surprised with some impressive spotlight moments. 

Special attention should also be paid to Christopher Youstra, Olney’s Associate Artistic Director and Director of Music Theatre, who, on top of conducting the evening, put on an endlessly energetic showing of the incredibly difficult and soloistic piano part. 

Apparently pulled together under a tight deadline with very little rehearsal, Olney Outdoors curator Kevin S. McAllister himself described the performers as “very fresh” in his opening statements. There were a fair few stumbles, flubbed lines, and missed entrances—with the exception of Bagel, whose flawless delivery was evidence of how thoroughly she both knows and cares for the material—that gave the event more of an air of a dress rehearsal. 

On the production side matters felt similarly rushed, with somewhat chaotic lighting, and sound mixing that capably amplified the performers but failed to get across the intricacies of Brown’s vocal writing when the full ensemble sang together. 

What this no-frills concert did very succesffuly accomplish was to shine a much more focused light on what Songs For a New World is at its core: a non-stop parade of heartfelt showstoppers in which every minute detail and decision matters. With nothing between the audience and the singers—not sets, not costumes, to some extent not even rehearsal—these tiny moments in a show all about moments are put under the brightest spotlight. The measured escalation in Mitchell’s “I’m Not Afraid of Anything.” Each calculated sigh and grimace in Mainwaring’s “She Cries.” The subtle, underplayed jabs in Murray’s “Just One Step.” How LaMarr raises the roof in the simultaneously triumphant and tragic “Hear My Song.” And the absolute unbridled power of Bagel’s “The Flagmaker, 1775” which has rarely felt as triumphantly furious. 

On top of all that, what truly made the evening special was watching the way the performers enjoyed listening to each other, basking in each others' presence. Seated, out of the spotlight, they were uninterruptedly dialed in, constantly reacting, smiling, tapping along to their co-stars. That sense of camaraderie and excitement of simply being there really elevated the entire event, and that energy was contagious among the audience as well. For any Songs For a New World fan, it was definitely a night to remember. But then again, for those not yet initiated the final product may well have been a tad too underbaked to justify the high cost of admission.