Susan is in Latvia. Sadie is in New Mexico. Beckett is in Ireland. All three are alone; all three are haunted by their grandparents; all three hear the Big Bad Wolf scratching at the door. This world premiere musical from Dave Malloy brings three strangers together for a post-pandemic open mic night parable about magic, madness, and the end of the world.
It’s no news that the best composers and lyricists are said to have style, which means that to some extent their work is recognizable for repeated hallmarks. Of lesser composers and lyricists, the assessment is that everything they come up with sounds alike. Maybe Dave Malloy fits his own intriguing category: Everything tends to sound alike and yet everything unmistakably has style.
For many, it will be enough compensation that Malloy’s music remains as hypnotic and embracing as ever, performed faultlessly by the cast (especially Seibert) and a busy quartet (violin, cello, French horn, keyboards) under Or Matias’s musical direction. A close-harmony coda, accompanied only by a hurdy-gurdy drone, specifically recalls the a cappella wonders of “Octet” and the hushed beauty of the title song of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” But intermittent gorgeousness is not, for me, a sufficient substitute for substance. What is “Three Houses” trying to say, or have us experience, about living through the pandemic — beyond the usefulness of eight quantities of liquor?
2024 | Off-Broadway |
Signature Theatre Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
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