For musical fans, the TV series of the spring is ‘Up Here’

By JOHN PAUL KING

Love stories are never out of season, but if there’s any time when they feel more welcome than usual, it’s in the early blossom of spring.

We’re not talking about just any love stories here, but the kind of sappy, feel-good tales of romance that most of us scoff at but secretly dream of living for ourselves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the same people who enjoy that oft-maligned sub-genre also tend to be fond of musicals, and if that sounds like you – especially if you’re a nostalgic Millennial or an older Gen-Z-er with a fondness for the Disney classics of the ‘80s and 90s – then congratulations: you’re the target audience for “Up Here,” Hulu’s new series about the young love on the cusp of Y2K!

A musical romance set in the waning days of 1999 New York City, it follows Lindsay (Mae Whitman) and Miguel (Carlos Valdes), two misfits chasing their dreams of success who fall in love and discover that when it comes to finding happiness together, their greatest obstacle might be themselves or at least, the personified memories that live inside their heads, giving elaborately orchestrated and impeccably arranged voice to the treacherous world of embarrassments, obsessions, fears, and fantasies that in uence their behavior and their choices.

It’s not exactly a new concept. From “Herman’s Head” to “Inside Out” and countless other iterations in between, the eminently relatable idea of a “committee” inside our minds –often made up of people whose presence in our past left a significant mark commenting on and trying to in uence every detail of our lives has provided plenty of fuel for onscreen entertainment. It might be a trope, but whether it’s played for laughs or for serious contemplation (it’s almost always a mix of both, though the ratio may vary widely), these stories always give us food for thought.

“Up Here” is no exception, but it hones and targets its appeal by delivering that meal with a heaping side of musical meta-commentary. Developed and adapted by Steven Levenson with married songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, it’s based on a 2015 musical by the latter – a married pair responsible, either together or individually with other writing partners, for composing the songs of “Avenue Q”, “Frozen” and “Coco”, along with several other massively successful musical entertainments of the past decade or so. Combined with the track record of Levenson (who wrote the book for Broadway’s “Dear Evan Hanson” and the screenplay for 2021’s “Tick, Tick… Boom!”) and co-Executive Producer Thomas Kail (director of 2020’s filmed “Hamilton” and showrunner for the acclaimed FX bio-series “Fosse/Verdon), the Lopez knack for upbeat, stirring, and infectiously clever pop-in ected songs gives the show more than enough promise to ensure any serious musical fan will be on board to at least give it a chance.

When they do, they’ll likely be hooked from the start by a quirky, tongue-in-cheek tone that somehow manages to strike a sustainable balance between self-aware parody and sincere exploration of an art form which, frankly, ends up being the butt of a lot of jokes from those immune to its stylized charms. Musical fans know what we’re talking about, and we feel their pain – but we can’t help also appreciating the more cynical worldview that often makes the genre seem more like feel-good pablum than serious artistic expression. Still, regardless of one’s personal taste for musicals, it’s hard not to respect an approach that acknowledges the inherent absurdity of the format while still committing itself unapologetically to honoring the optimistic romanticism that makes it so irresistible for a legion of die-hard aficionados many of whom, at the risk of perpetuating a stereotype, happen to be queer, an additional perspective that will surely help the show’s tale of romance between two square pegs in a world full of round holes land even closer to home for a substantial percentage of its viewing audience.

It’s also hard not to be won over by the performers, who seem to gleefully embrace –and rightfully so the opportunity to show off all their triple-threat chops onscreen, not to mention the chance to sing material from the two-time-Oscar winning Team Lopez. Whitman, a former child actress and voice performer who successfully transitioned into “grown-up” roles (most notably opposite Christina Hendricks and Retta on the dark TV crime comedy “Bad Girls”) and came out as pansexual in 2021, turns her unconventional appeal into an anchor for the show’s sometimes far- ung wildness she wins our hearts by the end of her first scene, and she only becomes more endearing from there. Valdes makes a perfect counter to her offbeat underdog energy, the “Lion King” to her “Little Mermaid”, a swoon-worthy sensitive good guy in disguise who can’t help wearing his heart on his sleeve even as he tries to blend in with the douche-y finance bros in his workplace. Katie Finneran, John Hodgman, Andr a Burns, Scott Porter, Sophia Hammons, and Emilia Suárez comprise the ensemble of voices inside the lovers’ heads, each of them embodying real people with backstories of their own which affords them all an occasional spotlight moment and allows for plenty of subtle nuance in their performances as they serve as a literal chorus for the “dramedy” at hand.

As for the material itself, “Up Here” boasts an extremely polished, sharply cinematic aesthetic that goes a long way toward softening any resistance to its musical conceits – and making up for a song score that, while solid and suited to the purpose, is largely devoid of the sort of standout “earworms” that typically score big points for musical fans. At times reminiscent of a goofy send-up like “Schmigadoon”, at others more a reverent homage to the screen musicals of classic Hollywood, and at still others approaching the sublimely deconstructed anti-romanticism of French auteur Jacques Demy’s ‘60s masterpieces, it benefits from a refusal to fall back on its potential for camp value though it occasionally leans hard in that direction, on purpose – by keeping us emotionally invested in its two appealing leads. It also makes sure to keep a healthy balance between musical fantasy and everyday reality, limiting the big, splashy production numbers to 2 or 3 per 30-minute-ish episode.

Probably the most intriguing aspect of the series, however, is its narrative structure, in which it shows us things through the experience of one of its characters – including their inner dialogues with their respective mental critics and commentators – and then replays them from the perspective of another. Again, it’s not an innovative concept, but it makes for a musical that has the space to go deeper than the not-entirely-accurate preconception of the genre as insubstantial “ uff” might deem possible.

Is that enough to make it appealing for people who don’t like musicals? It would be tempting to say yes, but there’s no denying that “Up There” is a show designed for a certain type of audience. If that DOESN’T sound like you, it’s probably best for you to skip it. For the rest of us, however, it’s a refreshing and surprisingly thought-provoking new addition to a genre that, for our money, can never get enough love.

‘Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992’ a uniquely ‘LA’ play

Show features multi-racial ensemble delivering dizzying array of characters

By JOHN PAUL KING

“Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” is a uniquely “LA” play. That may seem an obvious assertion – after all, it’s right there in the title – but in this case it designates far more than just setting.

Originally conceived, written, and performed by Anna Deavere Smith in 1993, it’s a chronicle of the riots – or the uprising, as it is now known by many – that took place in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney King during his arrest; it was a prolonged eruption of civil unrest that was national news, but for the people of LA it was a deeply traumatic experience that left lingering scars. For that reason alone, a performance of Smith’s piece in Los Angeles feels a little more personal than it might if were taking place anywhere else.

When you factor in the additional significance that comes with the 30th anniversary of that seminal, culture-shaking disruption to our city’s sense of identity, it’s clear to see why the production now onstage at the Mark Taper Forum – the very venue where Smith originally mounted the work – might strike a particularly resonant chord for Angelenos.

Directed by Gregg T. Daniel, the new “Twilight” – adapted by Smith herself in the wake of the George Floyd murder to allow production as an ensemble piece rather than a solo performance is keenly aware of its home field advantage, which it supplements with a production design featuring imagery of familiar local sites on projection screens which frame and visually dominate the stage. Along with the script’s frequent use of LA-centric street names, lingo, and cultural references, it’s enough to make the experience feel as much like a town hall meeting as it does an evening of theatre.

That’s built into the original material, of course. Created by Smith from transcriptions of approximately 300 interviews she personally conducted, it offers a daunting array of con icting opinions and opposing perspectives from a wide, multi-ethnic swath of real-life individuals impacted – either directly or indirectly – by the riot, which gives its voice the unmistakable ring of authenticity and roots it inextricably in LA’s shared cultural experience. Three decades later, it also amplifies echoes that have been reverberating louder ever since America watched a Black man being murdered on television in the middle of a pandemic. Since a videotape one of the first to capture police brutality against a person of color (POC) and expose it to millions of pairs of American eyes via broadcast television – was the catalyst that sparked the Rodney King riots, too, it’s hard not to be struck by the obvious symmetry.

“The resonance just doesn’t go away, says Daniel, speaking to the Blade about why reviving Smith’s iconic piece feels so chillingly apt in 2023. “You think, doing a play that’s thirty years old, ‘is this a museum piece?’ – but unfortunately, this is a play that can never get old, as long as these atrocities keep happening.” He went on to explain, “The last few years, thanks to cell phones and the internet, we’ve been exposed to so much violence by law enforcement against Black and brown bodies. There was George Floyd, of course, but also Ahmaud Arbery, Breanna Taylor – the names just keep on coming. Even as we were going into rehearsals, Tyre Nichols was murdered in Memphis.”

It goes without saying that many of today’s audiences are coming to Smith’s work with a renewed sense of – at the risk of inviting pejorative corruption of the word (and the concept) from conservative nay-sayers “wokeness” and a firmly-held interpretation of the “right” and “wrong” attitudes toward the acknowledgment of systemic racial inequality; but as Daniel points out, one of the defining features of the original piece is its refusal to resort to easy judgments.

“She’s not trying to ‘indict’ one side or the other. She just presents LA as it is; these are verbatim accounts of a time we are still trying to come to grips with, they’re not monologues or things that were composed, they are individual expressions of a real experience. She’s not trying to take up sides, she’s just presenting the way things are. Your relationship with it as a community member, living in America – this is what we have, and we have to deal with it.”

That refusal to fall into an easy perspective is what raises “Twilight” above the level of pure emotional propaganda. It’s not difficult to frame the cultural upheaval over odney King or George Floyd in terms of literal Black-and-white simplicity, but to face the myriad underlying complexities that contributed to the way each of these incidents played out in the public consciousness requires a less dogmatic mindset than that.

Without implying the validity of such reactionary counter-points as “ALL lives matter” or other such “what-about-isms” that are often substituted for rational responses in the debate over anti-BIPOC police violence, the material’s measured dispensation of contradictory-yet-equally-authentic viewpoints from a multi-racial and often-diametrically-opposed sampling of LA voices makes a strong case for the argument that the use of excessive violent force against anyone, regardless of ethnic origin, is an issue that goes beyond race.

That’s a key point, as far as Daniel is concerned, when it comes to recognizing the scope of the discussion “Twilight” invites. Yes, it centers on systemic violence against POC, and the complicated racial infighting particularly between the Korean American and Black communities, pitted against each other by circumstance and economic inequity in the communities they frequently co-habit – that so often obscures the deeper problems that underlie it from our view; but ultimately, in the wider scope, the stigma of “otherness” that infests our social and cultural systems and extends far beyond our untenably divided stance on racial equality and institutional reinvention presents a threat to the well-being of any community whether defined by race, beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, or any of the other surface differences we use to separate ourselves from one another.

As Daniel puts it, “Bigotry and hatred and violence, once it’s perpetrated against African American bodies, can be perpetrated against any bodies. It’s not a big leap to say that violence perpetrated against Black and BIPOC communities is violence against all communities that they deem as not being ‘American’ – it’s not even a stone’s throw away for them to feel the same way about Asian Americans, or Pacific Islanders, or Jewish people, or LGBTQ+ people. I mean, they’re trying to outlaw drag shows! Really? They think THAT is the problem?”

CONTINUES AT LOSANGELESBLADE.COM

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