The musical adaptation of \u201cThe Notebook\u201d first opened on Broadway in 2024, two decades after the release of the film of the same name. While the musical has since ended its run on Broadway, it is now on tour, taking the stage beneath the ornate ceiling of the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Based on the 1996 novel by Nicholas Sparks, both the book and the movie\u2019s story begin with Noah and Allie\u2019s first meeting in the 1940s. The musical pushes this date forward to the 1960s. This is relevant to plot points such as Noah\u2019s time serving in the army, which goes from enlistment in World War II to the Vietnam War draft. Watching the musical, one major question lingered: why? The music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson, famous for pop hits like \u201cThe Way I Am,\u201d \u201cGirls Chase Boys\u201d and \u201cEverybody,\u201d seemed completely self-contained and contemporary. They bear no resemblance to the iconic musicality of the 1960s, dominated by soul, folk, and later rock \u2014 something that would have tied musical themes into the new temporal setting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Early in the musical, older versions of Noah (Beau Gravitte) and Allie (Sharon Catherine Brown) sit at a well-loved piano as he begins to read her the story of their lives. The teenage version of Allie mentions having to leave Noah to make it home in time for a piano lesson. This sparks a memory in present-day Allie, and she begins to play a piece on the piano. Noah remarks that \u201cmusic is the last thing we forget,\u201d alluding to the progression of her Alzheimer\u2019s disease. This line revealed the intentionality behind adapting a story already so beloved in two artistic formats into a musical \u2014 music is the only way to connect to Allie\u2019s memories.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Noah and Allie exist as all three iterations of themselves at the same time: the teenagers in the first summer that they met, the young adults reuniting to rekindle a relationship and the older adults presently shuffling through memories. Older Noah and Allie watch their own memories, emphasizing Allie\u2019s severance from her own life. The past, present and future interact with each other, passing props between them and crossing paths in choreography.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The musical paces the story by grouping Allie\u2019s memories together thematically, rather than just chronologically. The choreography creates a physical representation of Allie\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s, with past character iterations arranged like chess pieces across the stage. She wanders through alone, trying to see their faces, but as she approaches, each character turns away. This is paired perfectly with Brown\u2019s performance of Allie\u2019s internal distress at feeling her memories just out of reach.<\/p>\n
The set design links water to memory, implying that both are intertwined with one as a physical necessity and the other as a soul necessity. During scenes at the dock, the walls are lit up with projections of ocean waves. As Allie remembers her life, the waves return \u2014 illuminating the stage in shades of blue.<\/p>\n
The house that young Noah (Kyle Mangold) builds for Allie is subtly introduced earlier\u00a0 with the song \u201cCarry You Home,\u201d but is concretely proposed in \u201cBlue Shutters.\u201d This song immediately links Noah\u2019s dream house to Allie\u2019s signature blue wardrobe. Post-war, the two are reunited when Allie reads about the house he built in the newspaper. The final song \u201cCoda\u201d brought the entire cast on stage \u2014 past, present and future. They repeated the lines \u201cI wanna go home\u201d layered with \u201cI will carry you home,\u201d emphasizing the theme of home as both a physical and emotional entity.<\/p>\n
The story of \u201cThe Notebook\u201d still feels trite even when told in the form of musical theater, despite the best efforts of the incredibly talented cast and crew. Without a perspective challenge to the source material, or even a distinct dialogue with past iterations, there is not much to provoke profound thought in the audience. There are fragments of ideas like music and art, the ocean and memory that are not quite fully developed into meaningful motifs. Even so, the detailed set design and passionate vocal performances add enough to the intrinsic magic of live theater to draw an audience to the stage on a Thursday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The musical adaptation of \u201cThe Notebook\u201d first opened on Broadway in 2024, two decades after the release of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[61037,87288,87285,101,103,102,104,87287,106,105,87286],"class_list":{"0":"post-184976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-ingrid-michaelson","9":"tag-nicholas-sparks","10":"tag-orpheum","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-broadway","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news","18":"tag-the-notebook"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}