Eight folks meet to share their tales and carry their voices up in tune. They’re a 12-step group of kinds, however the habit they’re trying to kick is the web.
Whether or not they’re obsessively checking their mentions on social media, enjoying “Sweet Crush” or utilizing relationship apps, they discover themselves dropping themselves on-line.
That’s the fundamental premise of “Octet,” the spellbinding chamber choir musical by Dave Malloy getting its West Coast debut at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
“I used to be engaged on a bit on Taoism, and that piece by no means really fairly coalesced into something,” Malloy remembers. “Taoism has this central tenet that argument itself is sort of a futile train, as a result of if one thing was clearly proper there could be no have to argue about it. So I used to be enthusiastic about that, and the best way that folks argue with one another on-line, and the best way that discourse unravels on-line. And it become this bigger piece about on-line stuff typically.”
“I often make theater about one thing that I’m obsessive about already,” he provides, “and I noticed my very own web tendencies have been moving into obsessive and addictive locations. So it was like, possibly I must be this.”
“Octet” premiered in 2019 at New York’s Signature Theatre Firm, the place Malloy is playwright in residence. Directed by Annie Tippe, Berkeley Rep’s manufacturing options seven out of eight of the unique solid.
“I’ve finished some very tiny revisions right here and there, simply a few musical issues that have been bugging me, and there’s some small changes which have made it post-COVID, some strains that simply felt so misplaced after having simply skilled the final two years,” Malloy says. “I believe to truly do a bit about display time in the course of the time of COVID could be only a utterly totally different piece. It was simply such a cataclysmic change. So it's nonetheless a bit that was written earlier than these instances, however there are just a few little modifications to mirror it.”
Now primarily based in Brooklyn, Malloy began his profession within the Bay Space, creating and performing in exhibits with Banana Bag & Bodice in San Francisco and Berkeley (“Sandwich,” “Gulag Ha Ha,” “The Sewers”) and with Ten Purple Hen within the steel store of Berkeley’s Willard Center Faculty (“(The 99-cent) Miss Saigon,” “Clown Bible”).
“Beowulf — A Thousand Years of Baggage,” his “songplay” with BB&B and Shotgun Gamers, gained the Glickman Award for greatest play to premiere within the Bay Space in 2008 and went on to a run in New York that helped launch his profession there.
He and “Beowulf” collaborator Jason Craig returned to Shotgun in 2011 with “Beardo,” a songplay about Rasputin. Malloy’s “Ghost Quartet,” which began in Berkeley Rep’s new works incubator the Floor Ground, performed San Francisco’s Curran Theater in 2015.
In 2016 Malloy made his Broadway debut with “Natasha, Pierre & the Nice Comet of 1812,” an electropop opera primarily based on a piece of “Struggle and Peace,” which went on to be nominated for 12 Tony Awards and gained two, for lighting and set design.
It additionally led to controversy, when producers tried to revitalize ticket gross sales by changing “Hamilton” veteran Okieriete Onaodowan with Mandy Patinkin within the lead, which had been initially performed by Malloy, and on Broadway by Josh Groban. Immediately changing a Black actor with a white star sparked criticism on social media, Patinkin pulled out, and Malloy ended up stepping again into the function.
That have additionally had an affect on “Octet” and its depiction of web discourse.
“‘Comet’ led to a barely unhealthy means that that was very Twitter-fueled,” Malloy says. “And so I did have that have of not fairly being canceled, nevertheless it was one thing unfolding on the web. So yeah, there was positively an affect there.”
Bay Space audiences will lastly get a style of “Comet” when Shotgun produces it this November.
Malloy’s musicals are typically eclectic and musically omnivorous. “Octet” is a departure in being totally a cappella, reflecting a large number of types and influences.
“Actually, it was fairly scary to put in writing, simply because it's the first time that I’ve written that I’ve written one thing that's really concerning the world as we speak,” Malloy provides. “I are likely to do diversifications of issues that have been written 200 or extra years in the past. So it did really feel actually totally different for me to be writing about folks really residing within the twenty first century.”
Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and comply with him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.
‘OCTET’
By Dave Malloy, introduced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre
When: In previews April 20-27; predominant run is April 27-Might 29
The place: Berkeley Rep’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Well being & security: Proof of vaccination required; masks have to be worn within the theater
Tickets: $29-$159; www.berkeleyrep.org