Stage Review - Ordinary Days (SecondStory Rep)
Stage Review - Ordinary Days
Presented By: SecondStory Rep - Redmond , WA
Show Run: May 09 - May 25, 2025
Date Reviewed: Thursday, May 15, 2025
Run Time: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes (no intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
Sometimes I watch a play, or a musical, that lived its life away from the spotlights of Broadway, and wonder why…. Why did that particular piece never hit the Broadway stage, or in the case of Ordinary Days, the 2008 “sung-through” musical from Adam Gwon, why did it never touch a stage there, or on the West End, even when it was revived as many times as it was over the years? Even Little Shop of Horrors, which was born off-Broadway, hit the West End and then made its Broadway debut later in 2003. This musical, which is currently running on stage at SecondStory Repertory in Redmond in a production directed by Scot Charles Anderson, fresh off his highly successful unique interpretation of Oliver! with Reboot Theatre, through May 25, is an enigma in this sense. But me being me, I’m unable to let anything lie, so I’ve been thinking about this since I attended last Thursday’s performance. Frankly, in my opinion, it’s a very good musical, the songs hit every band of the emotional spectrum and they allow the four actors on stage to show off many aspects of their vocal abilities, including their range, power, sustainment, especially when moving, emotional articulation, and character interpretation. It could be that perhaps the show feels like a conglomeration of musical styles, or I should say “styles of musicals”. During Thursday’s performance, I felt certain qualities of other shows, like The Last Five Years and Parade; I even felt Sondheim’s influence musically and lyrically, but that’s not enough to keep it away from Broadway, no, what I really think is that it’s the kind of musical that is so raw in its emotion and underlying design, which has a gritty aesthetic to it, that, to me, belongs not under a bright marquee, but a block or two away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist trap musicals. In other words, the answer to the question is that Ordinary Days has ended up exactly where it’s supposed to be, and that includes SecondStory with its nondescript entrance on the second floor of a shopping plaza, with a theatre space that is tucked back at the end of a narrow hallway beyond the restrooms and the water fountain. Ordinary Days and SecondStory Rep is a fit that is meant to be.
The story tracks four New Yorkers, one couple, Jason and Claire (Graham Arthur Blair and Lee Iris Thomas), Deb (Eilish Rhoades), a graduate student new to the city, and Warren (Max Lopuszynski), employed by an incarcerated artist, who begins the show by handing out leaflets with the artist’s pithy sayings on them, the same sayings that said artist landed in jail for by painting them all over town. Warren’s goal is to be noticed, and in the opening number “One by One by One”, the audience watches the city’s residents walk by, ignoring him, until he exclaims that “the whole entire city’s gonna look at me”. He wasn’t ignored by everyone, though. One person grabbed a leaflet and put it in her purse, Deb, who is working on her graduate thesis, but in the hustle and bustle of her day seems to have dropped her notebook. In a moment of serendipity, Warren finds the notebook and figures out a way to get it back to Deb, and despite his annoying positivity (to her), and her “I just want my notebook back” mentality, the two start to develop a friendship. At the same time, Jason and Claire begin the play by moving in together, immediately faced with the challenge of making their now limited space work. In the songs “The Space Between” and “Let Things Go”, the couple look at this new arrangement from two perspectives, but as the play progresses, while Warren and Deb build a closer friendly relationship, this new closeness starts to come between Jason and Claire. This is part of the Last Five Years feeling I mentioned, where one half of the play is building toward something new, while the other is being deconstructed. What I like about Ordinary Days, though, first of all, is that there is some exposition into what is causing Jason and Claire’s trouble, and the way it’s presented in the overall story is extremely well done, just one part of the pair of intertwining tales that is fast paced and engaging to watch unfold. One other thing I find refreshing is (spoiler alert) that Warren and Deb develop a close friendship and that not every relationship necessarily has to be a romantic one.
The construction of the story alternates between the couples, which allows the pace of the show itself to move along quickly. And in the design, Mark Chenovick has opted to go with something that skews a bit simpler than he’s been doing in his more recent shows at SecondStory, a set that is static, that paints a picture of a gritty New York, but is at the same time reliant on projections to provide context on where exactly the actors are. To stage left is what represents the flat that Jason and Claire share, to stage right, stone stairs where Deb likes to sit and ponder, or work, or where she and Warren share a moment, but the middle of the stage is where most of the action takes place, though there is movement throughout and around all areas of the set. The actors are rarely still, and Scot does a wonderful job of creating movement, and the idea of movement around a large space in one that is not. The overall mood of the piece is on the darker side, when I say this feels like a gritty depiction of Manhattan, it really does, it’s raw and this entire scenic design is perfect for the emotion of the play. Things lighten up when the characters are indoors, the couple at their apartment, or Warren and Deb meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the locations where the stories intersect, as they do in the story’s climax, in a creative turn where one couple’s relationship is directly impacted by what the other is experiencing, but otherwise, the feel of the musical is on the darker side of the spectrum. Picture the story not as an arc, but more like a strand of DNA, in which it twists and turns and intersects, but all comes together to define a single object.
The emotion in this musical, I believe, is something that has made me continue to think about it, here going on a few days after I experienced it, the emotion in the story, the songs, and especially in how these actors portray their characters. In what seems like just about perfect casting, Max seems like the obvious choice for Warren, he’s able to present that excessive (as Deb would call it “annoying”) positivity so naturally in how he carries himself, his expressions, and in the songs he sings. His character isn’t without his serious side, either. Warren’s true gift, though, is being able to see, and appreciate, the simple things in life. It’s what leads him to suggest to Deb that they meet at The Met, so that he can show her his favorite painting from Monet and the small things that make up the larger picture, and it’s what makes him the exact thing that the frazzled Deb needs in her life at this exact moment. Max bookends the show with the opening number “One by One by One”, an upbeat welcoming to the city, albeit a bittersweet one, and the closing “Beautiful”, a duet with Eilish’s Deb. Max has an excellent singing voice, as does Eilish, in fact this quartet of actors are all extremely talented, each able to sing with a rapid pace and not miss a note, but while Max displays that ultra-positive personality so well, Eilish is excellent at being frazzled, really she’s playing a type-A personality and is capable of bringing that into her vocals. When the two do meet up, though, their duet in “Sort of Fairy Tale” is my favorite moment of theirs, well performed and well designed by Scot as far as their movement is concerned.
Speaking from an emotional standpoint, Graham’s Jason is far and away the standout. It seems as much as Claire tries to distance herself from their relationship, Jason draws that much closer, and the pain that he feels comes across so well in Graham’s performance. Sure, he’s very good at the beginning when things are positive and their relationship is going strong, but when they’re struggling, and Jason comes to a realization that a hurdle might not be able to be overcome, his song “Favorite Places” is absolutely heart wrenching, and so tragically and beautifully performed. That song, and performance, alone is worth coming to see Ordinary Days, it’s that good. Claire, though, is a more complicated character. Where Jason is pretty straightforward with how he feels, Claire is holding back, distancing herself, though she’s not entirely forthcoming with Jason as to why she’s pulling herself away. And vocally, Lee Iris Thomas is superb at expressing herself through her singing, whether it’s the fear of losing her space (her independence) when Jason moves in, or the anger she feels out of the frustration when Jason keeps “pushing”, which to him means that he’s trying to express his love for her, but to her it’s smothering. She’s got three numbers toward the end of the show when Claire is trying to find her footing in the relationship and in her life, each of them good, but “I’ll Be Here”, in which Lee exhibits a powerful ability to belt that takes the audience by surprise, is her most emotionally transformative moment in the show, and it blows the roof off of the theatre.
Finally, as an ensemble, it’s mostly about how the group moves in the scenes in which they’re all together and how they transition between scenes in which each couple is featured. The best example is when they all arrive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art together, the first time the two storylines intersect, Warren meeting Deb to hand over her notebook and Jason and Claire there as part of their project to check off visiting all of the major sites in the city. Scot’s choreography is like watching a farce when its characters are weaving in and out of doors, just missing each other, it’s quick, and this group executes it with precision, while performing “Saturday at the Met”. It’s a fun scene, and though it ends with each couple going in different directions, it’s an example of where all of the best parts of the musical come together. It’s also about the continuity between songs, and tapping into the incredible talent that each of these individuals have to work together as couples and an ensemble when called upon, and music director Gabriel Mangiante, who also accompanies the actors on piano, sees to expertly, and its another example of the quality of the production as a whole.
Ordinary Days, the latest from SecondStory Rep, is a musical that owes a lot to its genre, with influences from Sondheim and other musicals like The Last Five Years and Parade. The story of four young New Yorkers trying to find their way in the city through their relationships, careers, and lives, with songs that run the emotional gamut, is in very capable hands with SecondStory and director Scot Charles Anderson. This production is emotionally charged and extremely well performed by a quartet of actors who shine from beginning to end in the latest chapter in what is becoming a season of great variety, and quality, from this theatre.
Ordinary Days runs on stage at SecondStory Rep in Redmond through May 25. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.secondstoryrep.org/.
Photo credit: Michael Brunk
