From Tony Award-winning composer JASON ROBERT BROWN (PARADE) comes a timely new musical about two talented young journalists on increasingly diverging paths. Set in the late 1990s amid a rapidly changing media landscape we meet a fast-rising journalist, Ethan Dobson, and an assistant copy editor, Robin Martinez, at the revered magazine The Connector. In a world that values the next big sensation, Ethan’s writing prowess and ambition force him to confront how far he’ll go for the ultimate scoop and Robin to consider how far she’ll go to stop him.
With a book by JONATHAN MARC SHERMAN, THE CONNECTOR will feature Brown leading the band at each performance and reuniting with THE LAST FIVE YEARS and SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD director DAISY PRINCE.
If there’s a red pen waiting for The Connector, perhaps it should underline the challenges of telling a tale with a twist that most of the audience will see coming from miles off. (The creative team hasn’t been shy about giving the game away in interviews either.) Indeed, you may wonder if there’s merit in an edit that, by spilling the beans earlier on, spent more time in trying to make sense of Ethan’s unraveling rather than simply hurtling toward it. Perhaps, but The Connector’s momentum is already pretty addictive, thanks to the electric collaboration of the writers and director Daisy Prince, who brought the concept to Brown shortly after helming his off-Broadway musical The Last Five Years in 2002. Prince keeps Robin and Ethan’s officemates constantly in motion and always on stage, either typing away at their desks or observing the action with intense curiosity, offering backing vocals while perched on piles of manuscripts that tower on either side of the stage. And Brown’s score, livelier if less sweeping than those for Parade and The Bridges of Madison County but more clever and compact than anything else he’s written, keeps moving too. Where he most excels as a composer, in soaring vocal lines that gaze down on nomadic grooves laced with sizzling piano licks, is the perfect landscape for a show like this. (He also conducts the show’s entire run from the keyboard.)
The Connector ultimately falls victim to a problem not unlike Dobson’s: the story spun is fun but its details are sketchy, the piece easily strayed by colorful characters too easy in their writerly employs, and an overall tendency toward editorial world-building (Beowulf Boritt does great scenic design work) when journalistic acuity would present a better study.
2018 | Regional (US) |
Powerhouse Season Workshop Regional (US) |
2024 | Off-Broadway |
MCC Theater Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Costume Design of a Musical | Márion Talán de la Rosa |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Direction of a Musical | Daisy Prince |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical | Ben Levi Ross |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting Design of a Musical | Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lyrics | Jason Robert Brown |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Music | Jason Robert Brown |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Musical | The Connector |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Projection and Video Design | Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Book of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Jonathan Marc Sherman |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Direction of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Daisy Prince |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in an Off-Broadway Musical | Jessica Molaskey |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in an Off-Broadway Musical | Hannah Cruz |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Lead Performer in an Off-Broadway Musical | Ben Levi Ross |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical | The Connector |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Score (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Jason Robert Brown |
2024 | The Lortels | Outstanding Featured Performer in a Musical | Jessica Molaskey |
2024 | The Lortels | Outstanding Projection Design | Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew |
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