Music makes ‘Once’ a worthwhile show at Starlight

Live Irish music is one of the great pleasures of the world, and seeing Glen Hansard and his various bandmates perform a transcendent one. So the idea of adapting “Once,” putting a Broadway gloss on Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s soundtrack to the understated 2006 movie, is an intriguing proposal.

The story opens with a “broken-hearted Hoover fixer sucker guy” about to give up on writing songs until he meets a young Czech girl, who ingratiates herself by asking him to fix her vacuum. She likes his music, and their duet of “Falling Slowly” in a music store cements a certain bond between them.

Over the course of a few days, she encourages him to record a demo and go to New York to reconcile with his ex-girlfriend, with whom it is obvious — to her — he’s still painfully in love.

Though it was probably inevitable, the Starlight Theatre show’s book loses some of the subtlety that made the film so memorable. Guy and Girl are obliged to articulate the themes of love and fear and discuss their relationship in a slightly clunky way. We are introduced to broad characters like Girl’s Czech roommates and a high-strung music store owner who never rise much above comic relief.

Sam Cieri is terrific as Guy. He has a folk-rock roughness to his voice that grounds the numbers in emotion. His solid Dublin accent and nervous-bashful body language help him create the most complete character in the show. Of all the actors, he comes closest to the naturalism of the film.

Mackenzie Lesser-Roy is a bubbly, likable Girl. She has good chemistry with Cieri, but her character comes off stagier than his — with big-voice solo numbers, wistful dances and cloying catchphrases.

This portrayal has the unfortunate result of weighting the story slightly in Guy’s direction — so it’s more the story of his self-realization and how she helped him there rather than a double-sided portrait.

The important thing in a show like this, though, is the music. “Once” the movie was one of those kind-of musicals that feature songs because the characters are musicians performing them in real-life situations. The stage version adds a nice twist by having the ensemble double as the orchestra (as well as the crew during set changes).

“Gold,” which ends act one, starts out as a solo acoustic number but builds until the entire cast is swaying to its lilting melody. “When Your Mind’s Made Up,” with each musician giving it all they’ve got, takes on an energy and an urgency that always make this song a showstopper.

Mix-and-match furniture conjures up a music store, a recording studio or a beach, always inside the mirrored walls of an Irish pub. That set, combined with the onstage music and instruments, evokes the feeling of sitting in on a group session in Dublin, which is essentially the heart and soul of “Once.”

This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Music makes ‘Once’ a worthwhile show at Starlight."