Always Something There… has got the Gen X high school beat at the Marriott
Always Something There…, an 80s-pop jukebox musical enjoying its world premiere at the Marriott Theatre, delivers a raucous good time with a premise that updates Peggy Sue Got Married with a potent girl-power twist.
Heidi Kettenring (last seen here blowing audiences out of the water with her powerhouse singing in Titanic The Musical) is Samantha Craig, a fortysomething corporate road warrior for a toilet manufacturer who gets served with faxed divorce papers while checking in to a motel the night before a big sales meeting. The clerk notes that pop star Cooper Roy (a winning Ian Coursey) is playing a gig down the street if Samantha wants to dance her blues away.
Little does the hotel staffer know that Samantha played in a band with Cooper throughout childhood only to blow her chance at love and stardom at the insistence of her self-centered idiot high school boyfriend Johnny Stevens (a suitably repellent Ty Shay)–the very same heel who’s divorcing her now.
Kettenring, giving Amanda Peet in Your Friends and Neighbors a run for her money, plays the resulting lobby breakdown quite believably as she belts “Only in My Dreams.” And wouldn’t you know it? It’s her birthday, so the clerk offers her a celebratory muffin, complete with candle. When she blows it out, she quite naturally wishes for a do-over in life, and then wakes up the next morning as her 18-year-old self with her adult wisdom, perspective and life experience intact.
In terms of traditional gender roles and patriarchal social dominance, high schools of the 1980s had more in common with the 1950s and pre-psychedelic 60s than with the first full flowering of feminism that came between. If you want to understand why Gen X is the one that swung harder from the Democratic party to Trump than any other generation, this show will help you understand–or it will remind you of that cringe-worthy era.
Playwright Sandy Rustin (Clue, Mystic Pizza) clearly came of age during the 80s and 90s, during which time she grew up in Chicago and attended Northwestern University. (The loopy, checked-out Spanish teacher–one of several fun characters essayed by Leah Morrow–had me wondering if we went to high school together, but Rustin’s a few years younger than me.)
In addition to Kettenring and the songs–including crowd pleasers “We Got the Beat,” “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” two Madonna numbers and, of course, the Naked Eyes earworm “Always Something There to Remind Me” that got many of us through teenage breakups–this production’s biggest asset is Christina Priestner, who nails the lead role of teen Samantha.
If John Hughes were still alive and making teen movies, Priestner would be the newest member of the Brat Pack. In her professional debut no less, she plays an insecure teen with the mind of a middle-aged woman with assurance and wit, and her voice is well-suited for the songs. She’s absolutely adorable in the same way that Molly Ringwald and Lea Thompson were back in the day.
Meanwhile, director James Vásquez, who previously helmed Damn Yankees and In the Heights at Marriott, seamlessly moves the characters through the in-the-round environment, and the six-piece orchestra shows off solid pop chops.
For all that, Always Something There… has a few structural issues, namely a too-abrupt ending, a somewhat self-conscious explanation of why ending up with the right boy can still be a noble aim for a fiercely independent woman, and a linear plotline from do-over dream to new, improved reality that would benefit from some twists along the road to wish fulfillment.
But those are quibbles. This show is a retro blast from beginning to end, even if you’re not from the slacker generation.
