The Eisendraths\u2019 high-voltage thrums are an ingenious match for the musical medical procedural. After all, both hospitals and clubs ignite adrenaline and fleeting, or maybe lasting, connections. Throughout an intermission-free 90 minutes, director Christopher Ashley paces The Heart like a relay, with proverbial batons passing from character to character \u2014 not unlike his rotating-talking-heads approach for Broadway’s Come From Away.<\/p>\n
One moment, 19-year-old Simon (Nick T. Daly) is surfing the California waves, and the next, a car accident renders him braindead. His separated parents, Marianne (Joaquina Kalukango) and Sean (Jason Tam), face the grueling decision to donate Simon\u2019s organs, heart-wrenchingly pondered in the song \u201cQuicksand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kalukango and Tam are hit-or-miss with their material as, respectively, a cliche of an overworked mother and a dad with a distracting surfer-bro accent. An otherwise charming Daly, who sits aside as an observing spirit, doesn\u2019t complicate Simon much further than a nice guy in living memory \u2014 there\u2019s a lot more telling than showing his flaws. And Simon\u2019s girlfriend, Juliette (Max McKenna), is underwritten and saddled with on-the-nose dialogue regarding her job as a DJ, an overarching metaphor.<\/p>\n
A motif in de Kerangal\u2019s book is chasing sensations of the flesh, and its characters have evocative, erotic interiorities. Those are sanitized here, but the marbles of universes that do exist within the medical staff \u2014 such as Drew Gehling as a charming cardiothoracic surgeon \u2014 are the lifeblood of The Heart. The book finds great humor in off-the-clock staff being interrupted by work calls, such as transplant coordinator Thomas (the divalicious countertenor Lincoln Clauss), in the middle of his wake-up and opera routine, and organ donation registry agent Marthe (Wren Rivera) logging out of their video game to match a donor to a recipient. You witness how these humans channel their passions into their jobs: Marthe treats donor\/recipient matching like a puzzle game, and Thomas pours out an oratorio to those who passed.<\/p>\n
The MPV, though, is Bre Jackson as the nurse Cordelia. In a show too breathless for applause breaks, she gets it anyway for the soulful \u201cRight Now\u201d as she belts and grooves around Simon\u2019s comatose body to give him company, regardless of her supervisor\u2019s scolding. Jackson conveys a woman with a complex relationship with the workforce while maintaining compassion.<\/p>\n
The second to snag applause is Heidi Blickenstaff as 50-year-old heart donation recipient Claire, who releases an avalanche of anguish and comic fretfulness as she accepts her presumed premature end (\u201cNobody Gets Out Alive\u201d) and her eventual struggles with wording a letter to her donor\u2019s family (\u201cToo Young\u201d).<\/p>\n
The Heart isn’t all seamless incisions. Side effects include mawkishness when the show dips into an inspirational-PSA tone. The electrifying music can overexert itself, and spurts of Gareth Owen\u2019s sound design drown out voices. And Mandy Moore\u2019s lively choreography swings big but lands as imprecise and curiously withdrawn from effectively theatricalizing a transplant surgery. And yet, so much of the musical thunders with intoxicating rhythms that can\u2019t be missed.<\/p>\n
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The Heart summary<\/p>\n
There are 24 hours to transplant a heart from a braindead patient, 19-year old surfer Simon Lamar, into Claire, a 50-year-old with heart failure. The Heart follows Simon\u2019s loved ones mourning and the medical staff preparing for the operation, all set to an electronic score.<\/p>\n
The Heart adapts Maylis de Kerangal\u2019s 2014 French-language novel R\u00e9parer les Vivants by transplanting the Le Havre, France setting to San Diego, California. The musical had its 2025 world premiere at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse.<\/p>\n
What to expect at The Heart<\/p>\n
The many moving parts of The Heart include actors doubling up on roles and a narrating chorus delivering detailed facts about the heart and transplant procedures. Design-wise, Lucy Mackinnon\u2019s video design also doubles up: A wavelength can be a sea wave and an EKG as projected atop a grid backdrop and behind Robert Brill\u2019s sleek cubic set. Prognosis: The Heart is a contender for most adventurous video design this theatre season.<\/p>\n
Musicals that show a dead subject can either present the corpse as an invisible presence (Operation Mincemeat) or an actor (Dead Outlaw). In The Heart, Simon does not stay an inert body on the hospital bed (a table which doubles as a surfboard); he\u2019s seated to the side as an observing spirit until called into flashback scenes. There\u2019s the added tragedy of him seemingly frozen in the way his loved ones remember him.<\/p>\n
The Heart runs 90 minutes with no intermission and contains discussions of death and medical procedures.<\/p>\n
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What audiences are saying about The Heart<\/p>\n
How do the charts read? On the review aggregator Show-Score, as of writing, The Heart has an 82% audience approval rating based on 126 reviews.<\/p>\n
“It was a beautiful musical that made you smile, laugh, and at times cry. The cast were incredible. The mother’s voice and emotional connection to her character made my tears flow as freely as hers did in real life. The way they gave each actor 2 characters to portray helped to soften the material so you were not left emotionally devastated and you felt hopeful and at peace.” – Show-Score user Mary M
\n\u201cChristopher Ashley\u2019s direction keeps the action taut, but it\u2019s Mandy Moore\u2019s choreography that really makes the stage feel alive. She moves the actors constantly with doctors rushing, nurses crossing paths, and parents circling each other in grief. The effect is both clinical and overwhelming.\u201d – Critic ErinMarie Reiter, reviewing the La Jolla Playhouse on BroadwayWorld<\/a>
\n\u201cFor me this walked the line between cheesy and great, but overall it worked for me.\u201d – Mezzanine user Currer Bell
\n\u201cThe musical sure pulls on your heartstrings, no pun intended. But it captures the deep essence of the complexities of the human stories we doctors and healthcare professionals encounter day after day.\u201d – Instagram user @santistc<\/a><\/p>\n