'Maybe Happy Ending' actor and composer on the musical that's captivating Broadway

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: It’s a musical called “Maybe Happy Ending,” and if that title leaves you guessing about the storyline, there’s no doubt the show itself is getting its due. It’s the winner of six Tony Awards, including best musical.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has a look for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

(Singing)

Jeffrey Brown: Oliver leads a fairly routine life listening to his jazz records, tidying up day after day, year after year in his one small room in a retirement home.

But we’re in the near future, and Oliver is a robot, a now obsolete model living out his time. Replacement parts are no longer being made. So he’s different from you and me, right?

Darren Criss, Actor: I think one of the most beautiful sentiments of the show is the way that love makes things alive. Love makes things — quote, unquote — “human,” but I will use the term alive.

Jeffrey Brown: Darren Criss won a Tony for his portrayal of Oliver in what easily qualifies as this year’s version of the little show that could, “Maybe Happy Ending.”

Will Aronson, Composer: We’ve written four shows together now.

Jeffrey Brown: Composer Will Aronson also won Tonys with his Korean song and book writing partner Hue Park…

HUE PARK, Lyricist: Thank you so much for supporting us for this nine-year journey.

Jeffrey Brown: … and credits Park for the original idea.

Will Aronson: Well, luckily he didn’t say to me, let’s write a musical about robots in love, because I think like everyone else that might not sound like the best pitch. He said, oh, I have an image for you. It’s this lonely robot playing trombone in this basement parking garage late at night when no one’s around.

That was the image he came to me with.

Darren Criss: Way better pitch.

Jeffrey Brown: And you thought?

Will Aronson: And I thought, this is really exciting.

Jeffrey Brown: To be sure, the two lifelike machines at the heart of the story, Oliver and Claire, played by Helen J. Shen, who lives across the hall, do find their way toward love.

But as older model helper bots built to serve humans, they’re no longer of use to their former owners, and their hard drives holding memories are wearing down, in Oliver’s case, memories of his owner, James, played by Marcus Choi, whom Oliver thinks of in human terms as his best, make that only, friend.

For anyone in the audience contemplating his or her own battery life and who will be there for us in the end, it’s not hard to connect.

Darren Criss: Which is exactly where I want to get you, so by the time we actually do become more human, you are now more dilated to the idea of like, oh, my God, maybe we are the same kind of person, which is what I think art can do at its highest level, or at least that’s our goal.

Jeffrey Brown: You just did the motion that switches back and forth between — right?

Darren Criss: Exactly. There’s a stark physicality that is supposed to feel not human, but through the course of the show, as more human things are presented to this person…

Jeffrey Brown: Like love and relationships?

Darren Criss: Love and relationships, or the idea of obsolescence, or how one can be resilient or fearful of that, and how you choose to cope with that idea, this turns into sort of a softening of that physicality into something perhaps more humanlike.

Jeffrey Brown: In addition to Chris and Shen, there’s an old-style crooner played by Dez Duron, who regularly appears, evoking Oliver and his owner’s love of jazz in an earlier life.

Michael Arden, Director: Thank you to all my helper bots.

Jeffrey Brown: Director Michael Arden and scenic designers Dane Laffrey and George Reeve all won Tonys for the production and stagecraft that includes a sliding panel set that keeps a relatively quiet story continually on the move.

The music itself avoids the big and brash numbers, at times over the top, of many of today’s Broadway musicals.

Will Aronson: We love to come to a show, or any work of art, where we feel like a world is being created.

Darren Criss: Yes.

Will Aronson: And certainly the approach to the acting, the approach to the directing, the physical staging, all of these are so unique. I mean, you haven’t seen these things before, and I think we also wanted a musical world that was a little different, I think, so you come out remembering the world of it.

Darren Criss: Yes.

Will Aronson: You know, it carves out a little space in your brain, maybe.

Jeffrey Brown: But even so, “Maybe Happy Ending” nearly crash-landed early on, facing delays in development, including from the pandemic, and a very slow box office as it began its Broadway run, as producers found it hard to market a show like this. Even its name was confusing to many.

Will Aronson: Hue and I had to leave for Korea for a different show right after opening night, literally the next morning. And we had had such an amazing time.

Darren Criss: They got out of town.

(Crosstalk)

Darren Criss: They ran for the border.

(Laughter)

Will Aronson: This was preplanned. We weren’t like…

Darren Criss: It’s like “The Producers” say, drop it and go.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes, we’re out of here.

Will Aronson: Yes. No, no, no.

Darren Criss: That’s great.

Will Aronson: No, no, we had to. We didn’t want to, but we had this really emotional goodbye with everyone, because we thought we will be back in two months. I mean, many shows close in the first two months, so we didn’t know that we would see everyone again.

Man: The Tony Award goes to “Maybe Happy Ending.”

(Cheering)

Jeffrey Brown: They certainly would see one another again, including on the biggest Broadway stage, the Tonys. But, says Chris:

Darren Criss: The Tonys were not on the itinerary. That’s not why we’re here. That’s not why we — why I said yes to this show, why I wanted to do the show.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes. Well, I mean, it’s not something you can plan on, right?

Darren Criss: It’s not something…

Will Aronson: No.

Darren Criss: And if you do, that’s probably a surefire way to really disappoint yourself.

Will Aronson: That’s right.

Jeffrey Brown: So why do you do what you do?

Darren Criss: We don’t know how to do anything else, man.

(Laughter

Will Aronson: Exactly. No.

Jeffrey Brown: And now they do have a big hit, a happy ending, for sure. And Darren Criss has his own personal dream for the show.

Darren Criss: Decades from now, I will be in some random place, some city that I have never been to. Somebody says, hey we’re actually doing — we’re doing “Maybe Happy Ending” at the local whatever. It’s community theater, high school theater. Would you come? And I go, you know what? Yes, I’d love to.

And I go, and it’s not a great production. I will be like, we made it.

(Laughter)

Darren Criss: We did it. You know why? Because that means this show would have punctured the cultural zeitgeist enough to where everybody is doing it.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes, done with love.

Darren Criss: Done with love.

Will Aronson: Yes.

Darren Criss: And enough people will see it that will be inspired or people that are in it that will be inspired to maybe work on Broadway one day. So, when you say “Maybe Happy Ending,” I do go, it’s maybe happy beginning yet again.

Jeffrey Brown: That beginning continues on Broadway and starting next year with a North American tour.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in New York.