By Steven Suskin
25 Mar 2012

	Cristin Milioti and Steve Kazee in Once.
	photo by Joan Marcus

For those who wonder how you can take a show from a tiny Off-Broadway house and expand it, guess what? The stage of the NYTW appears to be wider than the Jacobs. (And to those traditionalists out there, this is the Royale; I never got Bernie and Gerry mixed up — it was pretty much impossible to confuse them — but I'm still not quite sure whether it's the Schoenfeld or the Jacobs that's next to the Booth.)

That's right. Bob Crowley's barroom set — and the set, with its five dozen-or-so mirrors, is a major asset among major assets — seemed to have some air space on the sides downtown; here it crams the stage from wing to wing. So much for the notion of needing to enlarge the show for the move. At the same time, the Royale — er, the Jacobs — has fly space, with a massive upstage brick wall serving to crush down these struggling characters. If Crowley's set works perfectly in the new venue — and I wouldn't put it past this team of canny producers to have lined up the Jacobs in the first place and Fedexed Crowley the groundplan — the added height allows lighting designer Natasha Katz to delight us even more than she did downtown. (I still, after repeat viewings, marvel at the way she carpets the stage with twinkling lights in the hill scene.)

And what of the intricacies of making an Off-Broadway score fill a big house without adverse effect? Anyone who saw the show downtown knows this will not be an issue, not with 12 actor-musicians who play onstage throughout. (Downtown, many of them seemed to be musicians who act; up here, the ensemble acting has improved to the extent that the identical cast seems comprised of actors who play multiple instruments. And extraordinarily well.) Some of your big-budget musicals nowadays — Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia! and The Book of Mormon — have orchestras of nine, so Once is larger by a third. And there is something to be said for the sound you get from as many as eight guitarists standing in front of you, strumming together.

	Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová at the Off-Broadway opening
	Photo by Monica Simoes

Here we have numerous ingredients, all of which work splendidly alone and together. These start with the book by Enda Walsh, which is sensitive, evocative, and often wildly funny. The direction comes from John Tiffany, the movement from Steven Hoggett (the pair responsible for Black Watch). None of the three are musical theatre sort of guys, it seems. Maybe what Broadway needs is more non-musical theatre people doing musicals. Although having seen some recent musicals, let's withdraw that statement.

But it is the songs that are the strength of Once. This is musical theatre writing of a very different manner than we are accustomed to — no book songs, here, for starters — but in this particular case it all works. Splendidly. Yes, the score was written not for the stage but for the screen. Which signifies nothing. The songs, by the film's stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, work far better on stage than many written-for-Broadway scores I can name. "Falling Slowly," which won the Oscar for Best Song, is not unexpectedly the hit of the show. "If You Want Me" is just as good. "Leave," "Say It to Me Now," "Gold," "When Your Mind's Made Up," "The Hill": Hansard and Irglova keep impressing us. This is one of those shows where one character sings a song and another character says: "That's good!" This happens at least three times, and in each case the song is every bit as good as the on-stage character says it is. How often does that happen?

The music and the musicians sound spectacular from start to finish, which I suppose is creditable to orchestrator/musical supervisor Martin Lowe. Once is different than other musicals, and it sounds different than other musicals; but this is extra-special musical theatre. And let it be added that one of the peaks of the score comes when everyone stops playing near the end to give us an a cappella rendition of "Gold." Glorious, truly.

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