The entrancing new musical—not based on any film or book or series or album or—well you get me—Maybe Happy Ending, begins rather slowly and quietly as we witness the mundane (although not to him) day-to-day, moment-to-moment rituals that Oliver (Darren Criss), a retired robot who doesn’t realize he’s retired, goes through while he waits for his owner to come get him. Days become years because said owner failed to tell him he would never be returning. See it’s 2064 in Seoul, South Korea, and Oliver was a Helperbot, an android that basically acted as a right-hand to his owner, but his owner’s son resented Oliver, so he was banished to a retirement complex.
Enter Claire (Helen J. Shen) another obsolete bot who’s a later model with recharging issues. When she knocks on Oliver’s door, she disrupts his life and the two soon embark on the most oddball, but charming rom-com odysseys to hit Broadway in eons.
Directed in a sweet yet sly style by Michael Arden (the recent Parade revival), the production is enhanced by sweet and smart songs—music by Will Aronson, lyrics by Hue Park—who, together, also wrote the clever book. The songs never overwhelm the story, they aide in characterization.
It’s tricky stuff dealing with robots who start to take on human emotions because there seems to only be one convenient fallback for creatives, that the AI’s do, indeed, develop human feelings. It’s a fairly facile, overused but constant plot machination in film, TV and stage stories. And this team do not really attempt to move beyond this trope. But they don’t over-humanize the characters either, which is refreshing.
As played by Shen, Claire is closer to human, which makes sense she’s series 5 vs. Oliver’s series 3. She’s had more programming.
Criss gives himself over completely to an original AI creation. Each movement and tick, every utterance, feels genuine, yet artificial (which it should) until, of course, his learned, but limited humanity starts to become real. And even then, he keeps it…unreal. It’s a terrific performance, outstanding without ever being over-the-top.
Dez Duron shows up and razzle-dazzles us with some jazzy, Rat-packy vocal stylings, channeling his inner Dean Martin. Duron provides a welcome, sexy, commentary on the narrative.
Maybe Happy Ending asks some very real questions about the finite and ephemeral nature of our lives. Just like the fireflies in a whopper of a scene where we meet the orchestra, humans are only here for a brief spell, and like our two robots, are much more fulfilled when someone shares the journey with us.
Maybe Happy Ending is playing at the Belasco Theatre (111 West 44th St., NYC) Tickets: https://www.maybehappyending.com
