Octet at Crow’s Theatre
Octet, the a capella musical by Dave Malloy, now at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto under Chris Abraham’s direction, has received ecstatic reviews from all the critics. So why do I find myself neither shaken nor stirred?
Octet is set in your typical church basement (nicely evoked by set designer Joshua Quinlan), albeit one with a video screen floor that is almost constantly alive. We are eavesdropping on a support group for addicts organized by one Saul who, Godot-like, never appears. Make of that what you will.
The addiction in question is to the Internet in its manifold manifestations and, conveniently, each of the attendees has been snared by a different tentacle of the electronic monster.
One by one through intense, propulsive monologues or in songs for which the others provide backup vocals, the tormented souls in Octet tell us about the ecstasy and the agony and their idiosyncratic afflictions. If you’ve been awake the last few decades none of their problems will be a surprise. Online games, pornography, videos of infants being raped (well, actually that was a new one for me), obsessive doomscrolling, online dating and shopping, and so forth have been the subjects of countless articles you have at least glanced through.
Octet makes a persuasive case for the Internet being a perfectly ghastly place to spend time. Fifteen minutes into the proceedings I was ready to get up, go home, and toss my laptop into the nearest river. But Octet goes on and on for ninety uninterrupted minutes until I felt like I was being banged over the head.
Much about Octet is impressive, starting with Malloy’s music and the arrangements by music director Ryan deSouza. As a graduate of Yale, where a capella singing groups are an inescapable feature of campus life, I liked the way in which each musical number was preceded by the lead singer using a pitch pipe to set the key. There’s even a nice bit where the entire cast forms a sort of pitch pipe orchestra.
It’s also impossible to fault the cast of Octet. They all sing and act superbly. I especially enjoyed seeing Damien Atkins in a complete change of pace as the very gay Henry, who is addicted to a game that looks a lot like Candy Crush. You’d never guess this was the same actor who turned in an impressive Sherlock Holmes at the Shaw Festival last season.
Also most impressive is Ben Carlson as Marvin, a scientist whose obsessive arguing with creationists leads him down a wormhole that has him wrestling with the existence of God. During his speech, the other cast members function as something of a Greek chorus with a crystal clear enunciation that you are seldom lucky enough to hear in an actual production of Euripides. Most impressive.
There is some lovely singing by Jacqueline Thair and Zorana Sadiq, while Alicia Ault delivers a rapid fire soliloquy about all the occult weirdness with which she is involved online.
On the less positive side, I couldn’t help feeling Abraham’s hyper-kinetic direction was way too much of a muchness. For starters, that hyper-active video floor is in danger of becoming an Abraham cliché. Was it so expensive to install that he feels he needs to get his money’s worth? Nathan Bruce is credited as video designer and he did his job well.
While a mile-a-minute monologue is a great way for an actor to show off, it can be exhausting to listen to. I felt much the same for most of the musical numbers, energetically choreographed by Cameron Carver and nicely executed by the company.
And don’t get me started on the over-amplification and the too-obvious headsets with their olive-sized tan mics. Are the acoustics of Crow’s Guloien Theatre so poor that pumping the volume up to eleven was necessary? One of the performers, Giles Tomkins, a bass-baritone who plays the porn-soaked incel Ed, is a bona fide opera singer fer crissakes.
In short, I felt that Octet and the stories of the folks in that church basement might have fared better in a less frenetically paced, loud, high-concept presentation. When Octet was performed at the Signature Theatre in New York it ran for an hour and forty minutes, also without intermission. So either Abraham cut the piece ruthlessly or decided to play it at breakneck speed, maybe a combination of the two.
Mine, however, seems to be a minority opinion. Maybe I need to seek out a support group in some welcoming church basement.
Octet continues at Crow’s Theatre through November 2, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Crow’s Theatre website.
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