Artistic collaborations are often rife with problems — especially when the collaborators are talented, headstrong, volatile, manipulative and emotionally insecure.
Those adjectives encompass the characters in David Adjmi’s compelling “Stereophonic.” The national touring production of the multiple Tony Award winner is now at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. The story is not-so-loosely based on Anglo American pop-rock group Fleetwood Mac and their mid-1970s year-long tenure at Sausalito’s storied Record Plant, where they developed their bestselling album “Rumours.”
The band goes unnamed in the play — a drama, not a musical, despite some extended snippets of music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler that allude to Fleetwood Mac’s without obvious imitation. The bandmates share a home and rarely get away from each other, intensifying rather than ameliorating their private and interpersonal problems.
Add prodigious amounts of alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and cocaine and a virtually unlimited budget from an indulgent record label, and you have a recipe for potential disaster. One especially insightful juicy moment comes when the band’s three vocalists are performing some ethereal background harmonies, but in between takes can’t stop screaming viciously at each other. That the inspiration for this show was a commercial and artistic success is pretty much a miracle.
David Zinn’s set design turns the entire stage into a quite plausible recreation of the storied but still-in-existence studio in Sausalito — now named 2200 Studios — right down to its bias-cut redwood walls and an authentic and apparently functional multi-channel mixing console in front of a glass-paneled performance space, a metaphoric pressure cooker for five performers hoping to put down 12 compelling tracks for what may become a monster hit record.
The set doesn’t change even when the location shifts to Los Angeles in the last act — a benefit for the audience in that it keeps the show moving along at a good pace throughout its three hours. The only glaring error in the set design is a prominently displayed cheap-junk cassette deck that sees frequent duty as the musicians and recording engineers try test tracks. A studio of this stature would have had a couple of pro-level TASCAM machines at the very least, a detail likely unnoticed by almost everyone in the audience.
From left, Claire DeJean, Emilie Kouatchou and Denver Milord star in “Stereophonic.” (Photo by Julia Cervantes)
Director Daniel Aukin gets phenomenal performances from his seven-member cast: Jack Barrett as Grover, a youngish recording engineer who’s fudged his credentials to land the gig; Steven Lee Johnson as Grover’s even-younger assistant Charlie; Cornelius McMoyler as erratic but contemplative drummer Simon; Christopher Mowod as boozehound bassist Reg; Emilie Kouatchou as British songbird Holly, the most emotionally stable member of the group, who alienates her cohorts by moving into a Tiburon condo; Claire DeJean as self-doubting singer-songwriter Diane; and Denver Milord as autocratic lead guitarist Peter.
A more volatile mix of characters would be hard to imagine. The cast of “Stereophonic” brings them all to grimly compelling life in a must-see performance, slated to run through Nov. 23 but rumored to have been extended into January.
Aukin has said that at least 15 minutes were cut from the Broadway version for the national touring production, but there remain moments that could use a bit of editing too, especially an extended scene where Peter tries to convince Diane to have a baby. And we would have enjoyed more from Kouatchou as Holly — there are several online clips of her performing elsewhere. She’s a wonderful talent.
“Stereophonic” doesn’t close with a rousing rock anthem by the whole group, as might be expected. That would defeat the whole point of the show. Instead it ends in a melancholy minor key with the exhausted Grover hunched over his mixing console in the empty studio. He’s just informed the group that his next gig will be working with Hall and Oates, superstars from the same era who now communicate with each other only through their attorneys.
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact him at barry.m.willis@gmail.com
If you go
What: “Stereophonic”
Where: The Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco
When: Though Nov. 23; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 1 p.m. matinees Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays
Admission: $62 to $193
Information: broadwaysf.com
Rating (out of five stars): 4.5 stars