Empire: The Musical Off-Broadway Reviews

I won’t compare the ambitious, expensive-looking new Empire to community theater, because the insult would be the wrong way around. If by some money-related miracle, Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull’s moldy lemon of a musical makes good on the billing of its L.A. run as a “pre-Broadway engagement,” that should be all the proof any of us require for the fact that midtown is not the be-all, end-all of the theatrical impulse. Or perhaps, with its current run at the Broadway-adjacent New World Stages, Empire considers its dreams of the Great White Way close enough to fulfilled.

But even as the Empire book might well be beneficially tightened, the strong-voiced, energetic actors jauntily go about the tuneful songs and occasional songlets, as tidily directed by Cady Huffman and choreographed by Lorna Ventura in this year’s hyper-athletic trend. Stand-out numbers are “Never Say Never,” a proto-feminist pledge for Wally and cohorts, and the spirited “Moxie” for Smith, Raskob, and Kinney, as well as “Lookahee,” with the steelworkers lustily shouting at female passersby. (From as high as floor 102?) These click as well as a ballad fittingly called “Castles in the Air.” Shortly before closing, Sylvie and Wally maintain “We Were Here,” an anthem celebrating the many-races workers. No one leaving Empire will forget them soon. In that appropriately soaring manner, Sherman and Hull rivet their strong dramatic point

There’s really no main character in Empire, but they all have songs. If you have a name, you get a song! Musically, Sherman and Hull were clearly inspired by Kander and Ebb; lyrically, they seem to be influenced by Hallmark and Successories. “We get to love the greatest love/ We get to climb the highest heights”: That’s from “Nothing Comes for Free,” the American Idol–ready ballad for star-crossed lovers Rudy Shaw (Kabeary), a Mohawk woman, and Joe Pakulski (Devin Cortez), a white man. “My whole life I gave my all/ Now my back’s against the wall”: That’s from “Al’s Moxie”—not to be confused with “Moxie,” an earlier song—sung by Wally’s boss, ex–New York Governor Al Smith (Paul Salvatoriello, who’d be aces in a revival of Fiorello!). In “Lookahee,” a cringe-fest in which all the newsboy cap–clad laborers—ethnic stereotypes, every last one of them—show off their pickup skills, there’s “I can make you smile like the Mona Lisa”; is that supposed to be a compliment…or just a clumsy setup for a rhyme about the tower of Pisa? And in Sylvie and Wally’s “We Were Here”: “The risks of those who came before us were taken out of love/ To give us all a future, they still guide us from above.” A phrase better suited to an inscription than an incantation.

The construction of the Empire State Building, flaws and all, makes for great theatrical material so long as the show knows how to handle the scale of the effort. Empire: The Musical attempts to memorialize the five workers’ lives lost during construction, while also highlighting the Indigenous Americans on the job, but it lacks precision and fun. Too many characters don’t get fleshed out, and the show's preoccupation with making secretary “Wally” Wolodsky a proto-feminist manager for architect Charles Kinney (Albert Guerzon) and politician Al Smith (Paul Savatoriello) sinks when Wally’s actual role is revealed in the last act.