urban excavations

Maybe Happy Ending
Featuring Darren Criss, Helen J Shen, Marcus Choi, and Dez Duron
Belasco Theatre
October 16, 2024 – running
production site

Our world of dramatic literature, films, and television offerings (the most recent I have come across is the assistant-robot-gone-rogue adaptation of the science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries as soon to be adapted as a series on Apple TV), we often see robots as potentially lethal adversaries, and entities to be feared. Maybe Happy Ending, enjoying a run at the Belasco Theater after some years in development in Korea and elsewhere, offers robots who meet cute, a few humans who are learning their own sense of responsibility for others, and some tunes and situations that consider legacies of love and passionate fandom. It’s an oddball mix of charm and satisfaction in a jewel box of a set that moves with grace and the operation of which deserves a credit for scenic choreography.

Humans meet, connect, enervate, rejuvenate, then fade. Robots in this lovely drama-comedy-musical live the same rhythm. Set in 2064, the android servants called Helperbots of our story have long been assigned to humans to assist them, even befriend them. Oliver (Darren Criss) and Claire (Helen J Shen) are different versions, his Helpberbot 3 is slightly older then she, the sleeker Helperbot 5, and both have been assigned to a robot retirement home in Seoul. As we all know intuitively in 2024, after living through multiple generations of gadgets and software and plugs and batteries, inability to obtain replacement parts leads to obsolescence and death. As their equipment ages over the decades, Oliver and Claire have to jerry rig solutions to parts becoming obsolete, operating systems failing, batteries losing the ability to charge, mandating the need to remain plugged into a wall socket.

Claire seeks a charge from her next-door neighbor Oliver — her slightly newer model battery is not as solid as Oliver’s older and clunkier but more stable version. Oliver’s plug works, and they meet cute. Repetition is not boredom for a robot, but rather what they are designed to live in the daily visits for a new charge. The set by Dane Laffrey, the video design by George Reeve and Laffrey, and the choreography of the moving parts enchant and keep our limited human brains focused on this repetitious and marvelous set of circumstances. Walls with peep holes slide, videos scan, lighting emerges, and colors pop.

And the story becomes an adventure story — Claire’s battery is dying and unless she scores a replacement or figures out a long term plug solution, she begins to plan for the end. As they consider their life trajectories variously ending, both Claire and Oliver reflect with characters on stage (we later learn that the man who is on stage in a chair listening to a jazzy crooner was Oliver’s human) and on screen (Claire’s human we meet only in video memories she accesses with the help of Oliver in the course of the play). Each robot-human relationship severing has a human-human resonance of different needs and reasons for severing friendships and loveships. How we love people and how we re-connect.

Without walking through the mechanics of this sci-fi romcom’s plot points, suffice it to say that the characters (robot and human) seek connection and community and are gentle with one another. And there are fireflies (opportunity for sweet lighting effects!) and there is jazz (the passion of Oliver’s human passed to Oliver and, in the end, to us).

Music and lyrics are smart and funny and there are several gems in these (all credited to the book team Will Aronson and Hue Park) that will make their way into the standard cabaret songbook. They give to Helperbot Oliver the aching question, as he considers the time-limited fate of his beloved Claire, “how can people do this?” This is our question, that we answer together in theater, in musical theater, in this piece of musical theater especially.

© Martha Wade Steketee (November 14, 2024)

Book | Will Aronson and Hue Park
Music + Lyrics | Will Aronson and Hue Park
Director | Michael Arden
Set Design | Dane Laffrey
Costume Design | Clint Ramos
Lighting Design | Ben Stanton
Sound Design| Peter Hylenski
Video Design | George Reeve + Dane Laffrey