Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
How do you stop being yourself? It’s a question many of us face at some point. Todd Almond’s Edinburgh success I’m Almost There, now in a limited run at BAM, swoops us into a surreal vision of a day or two in the life of a gay New York City man continually getting waylaid just trying to be a decent and reasonably happy version of himself.
The show is an utterly charming amalgam of storytelling and cabaret, musical theater and confessional. Almond, at the piano, plays a good-hearted, romantically frustrated projection of (we presume) himself. He’s backed by bassist Noah Max Amick and by harpist Erin Hill, who also plays an important role in this fable.
At the outset Almond wins us over with humor, recounting his reluctant agreement to meet a no-show friend at a party. There he meets an attractive man, interestingly named Guy. The two form an immediate connection, but getting together for coffee the next day proves orders of magnitude harder than Todd had hoped.
His walk-up apartment building reveals itself as a cabinet of distractions erotic and pecuniary, troublesome neighbors, and dungeon nightmares. A vampiric neighbor wallows (figuratively and literally) in the past. A pyramid-scheming neighbor (Hill) has a deeper agenda than just money. Those are just two of the vivid “creatures” inhabiting the building, one that will feel pretty familiar to most any artsy New Yorker. So might the cast of characters.
Songs, storytelling, and role-switching twist Todd through a time-bending day of wonder and terror. Almond plays the piano with passion and sings in a clear, silvery baritone-shaded tenor that can croon gently and also land with force.
The show reaches an emotional climax with a number about being “almost halfway there” – that is, on the way to being oneself but as yet unable to get over some stubborn hump. Will Todd fall off the roof? Or out the window, trying to help a neighbor? Will he get sucked forever into childhood? Or into a nihilistic cult?
Most acutely, will he and Guy manage to get together for that second coffee-date? See I’m Almost There, in a smooth production directed by the eminent David Cromer, to find out. You’ll laugh, commiserate, and appreciate Almond’s sparkling music. It’s at the BAM Fishman Space through June 28, 2026.
