In times of stress, we often turn to familiar and comforting things: a favorite song, a dog-eared book, a movie we’ve seen twenty-seven times. We’re drawn back to the things we know because they have a certain salve to the severity and uncertainty around us. There’s a comfort in knowing what is coming, how something will turn out, that everything works out in the end (or doesn’t if that’s your jam). We can revisit the same story over and over again, play it in the background, speak it word-for-word, and still never tire of it. Even when the same story is told through a new medium, we gravitate towards it naturally, prepared to be comforted all over again.
Sharon Catherine Brown (Older Allie) and Beau Gravitte (Older Noah) in The Notebook. All photos by Roger Mastroianni.
For many millennials, there is no better comfort show than The Notebook, now a musical presented by Broadway in Chicago through August 16th. The Notebook is a new hit musical based on the best-selling novel that inspired the iconic 2004 film. Much like the movie and the book the musical adaptation is based on, The Notebook: The Musical follows the love story of Allie and Noah, a young man and woman from different worlds, sharing a lifetime of love despite the forces that threaten to pull them apart.
Truthfully, the love story of Allie and Noah isn’t particularly groundbreaking; a rich girl and a poor boy fall in love, but societal pressures and expectations push them apart and challenge their choices, though (spoiler) their love overcomes and they find their way back to one another time and time again. One of the central themes of the story is about young love. It’s a love that grows and yet remains unchanged. It’s about a love that endures and prevails against the most wicked villain in the universe: time.
Ken Wulf Clark (Middle Noah) and Alysha Deslorieux (Middle Allie).
The Notebook: The Musical visualizes this simple love in the most compelling of ways that both the book and the movie cannot truly capture. Memories of Noah and Allie’s younger and middle selves drift across the stage as the elder versions watch with reverie, nostalgia, and sonder. The interactions with these wisps are brief and fleeting, just like time itself. Songs are reprised and echoed throughout the play just as memories do, tangible and yet somehow out of reach. The stage medium hurriedly tells the same story we know (and watch on repeat yearly), but it’s this franticness that only adds to the beauty of The Notebook. Stage productions have a limited time to convey messages they want the audience to walk away with. It’s this medium that truly captures the urgency and fleetingness of The Notebook; that time in linear, ever-present, and ticking away until there is none left. The production even hints at this central theme from the moment you enter the theatre, the sound of a distant, persistent ticking clock. Time is the enemy, and it’s in time that we drift between our past and present selves and reflect on the love between Allie and Noah. That’s what makes The Notebook so comforting. It’s time, and the time that is given to us; what more is needed in this world than to love someone so deeply, and to be so loved in return, that time doesn’t matter?
Chloë Cheers (Younger Allie) and Kyle Mangold (Younger Noah).
Truthfully, The Notebook: The Musical is not particularly a revolutionary or Tony-award-winning musical. But then again, the 2004 adaptation of the novel wasn’t winning Oscars. It’s a simple story told through a new medium with plenty of feet-kicking, giggle-worthy, heart-wrenching moments. The songs are sweet, simple, and performed with incredible vocals and an emotionally vulnerable cast that heighten the awkward, love-sick, truly sick events that make this simple story so beloved by an entire generation.
It might not be flashy. The songs might not make Broadway playlists. But this musical is worth every fleeting moment of your time. To those who the story resonates with, it will feel like a favorite book filled with marginalia, a movie you can quote word-for-word, a song that brings butterflies to your stomach after decades of hearing it. And what better way to spend your time than curling up in an auditorium theatre to watch the beloved love story? The Notebook: The Musical is now playing at the James M. Nederlander Theatre (24 W. Randolph St., Chicago) through August 16th. Don’t waste any time and get your tickets today.
