Theater Review (Off-Broadway): ‘Maddie: A New Musical’

The Players Theatre on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village is an old-school venue. Lamplit walls. Worn seats. Echoes of three quarters of a century of shows scuffing the floor and whispering about the ceiling. What better place for an old-school show like Maddie? A new musical in the old style, Maddie is a tale of ghostly possession, Hollywood dreams, love in the bad old days of 1970s New York City, and the long pull of misogyny against second-wave feminism. That sounds like a lot, but this full-length tuner sprints by without taking any of its thematic components too seriously. It’s a winning formula.

Maddie: Time Enough for Ghosts

Shaun McKenna and Steven Dexter based their book on the 1973 novel Marion’s Wall, by Jack Finney of time-travel fiction fame. Finney’s story was itself loosely inspired by real-life 1930s film star Marian Marsh. In the show, timeworn tropes of hauntings and show business come to four-dimensional life with just the right balance of silliness and earnestness. Skillful music (Stephen Keeling) and lyrics (McKenna), zesty direction by Andrew Winans of an economical script, ebullient choreography (also by Winans), and a super cast add up to a refreshing burst of tunefulness and smiling double-nostalgia.

Former high-school sweethearts Nick (a smooth-voiced Joe Lewis) and Jan (a spectacular Kelly Maur) have just moved into an East Village fixer-upper apartment with flaky electricity and peeling wallpaper. (Props are minimal, but it’s not hard to imagine a bathtub in the kitchen.) As it turns out, old landlord Al (Alexander Todd Torrenga), a onetime vaudevillian, had a long-ago onstage and offstage relationship with Marian, with whom he shared the apartment decades ago. (In the show, Marsh is long dead. The real actress lived into her 90s, dying only in 2006.)

Unpacking in their new “piece of heaven” with the help of Jan’s BFF and co-worker Sally (a buoyantly funny Lexis Trechak), the young couple looks forward to a bright future despite the grunginess of 1977 NYC. “We don’t look back, we both feel complete,” they sing (“Don’t Look Back”). But it isn’t quite true. For example, they both want children, but exactly when turns out to be a matter of some disagreement.

When a lipstick-scrawled message appears behind the wallpaper, Marian’s spirit begins speaking to Nick and goes on to possess Jan’s body, kicking the plot into gear.

Power and Pizzazz

As Marian, Maur is a vampy, dancing whirlwind. As Jan she’s an anxious young wife just discovering her ability to express and pursue her own desires independent of Nick’s. The role brings out her triple-threat skills – beautiful singing, compelling turn-on-a-dime acting, and agile, effervescent dancing.

Marian’s ghostly desire to make a Hollywood comeback in Jan’s body forms one plot element. The other involves a scheme by rich Cordelia Van Arc (a funny Shannon Payette Seip in Mae West mode) and her lawyer Morton Dupree (Truman Griffin) to make a fortune by passing off as real some forged artworks Cordelia inherited from her late husband. To do so they need gallery supervisor Nick to authenticate them.

These power struggles combine to forge a story of sex and seduction, a Truman Capote-style black-and-white ball, true love, and a screen test in Los Angeles. The two pairs of leads join forces in a strong production number laying out their hopes for the future (“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”) but complications, of course, ensue. After each couple has a romantic duet, Jan/Maddie lights up the stage with a glorious number that almost made me tear up (“Time of My Life).”

A desperate, cajoling Maddie opens the second act with another fine number (“One More Day”). Re-emerging, Jan understandably complains about Maddie’s “checking in and out” of her: “I am not a hotel!” It’s an example of the warm, old-style humor that helps enliven the show. But Maddie’s spirit has begun to influence not just Jan but her friends, Sally included.

The latter leads a great partial patter-song I wished there was more of, the light-feminist anthem “What Would Maddie Do?” We get a glimpse of Jan and Sally laboring under a harassing boss, and later an enlightening and well-played insight into Nick’s incipient understanding of real love’s need for give-and-take.

I’ll let you guess whether these characters find a happy ending.

(You guessed right.)

Besides the fine on-stage performances, the production boasts spot-on live musical accompaniment by Matthew Zweibel (music direction, piano) and Jessie Nelson (drums), eye-catching costuming (Danny Durr), and subtly effective lighting and projections (Jess Choi and Claire Talbott respectively).

Maddie: A New Musical may call to mind past time-bending or Hollywood-themed musicals, anything from City of Angels to Dames at Sea. But it’s a fresh take on resonant themes and cultural history that never actually grow old. As William Faulkner said, “The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.” This show and production prove that’s true for musical theater too. There’s plenty of life left in the classic formulas.

Maddie runs through June 8, 2025 at the Players Theatre in NYC.