Review: Village's STRING Plucks Some Good Notes but Feels Incomplete

I'm fortunate enough to have been to a few of the Village Originals Festival of New Musicals where they present concert stagings of new shows in workshop. I've seen shows that I've felt needed to polish a bit but then get that bigger, mainstage production and I've seen shows that I've felt should have been placed carefully back in the writer's desk drawer and forgotten. "String" was definitely in the former camp, a fun little tuner with a bunch of potential that has now made it to the Village mainstage. Unfortunately, the rework of this show feels like it went in the wrong direction as the story now only has one focus leaving all others out in the cold.

In this fantastical world of "String" with a book by Sarah Hammond and Music and Lyrics by Adam Gwon, we get to peek behind the mythological tapestry and meet the fates, the Greek Sister Gods tasked with managing the threads of life. There's Clotho (Sara Porkalob), the youngest who weaves the string of a person's life, Lachesis (Lauren Du Pree) who measures the string, and Atropos (Jessica Skerritt), the eldest who cuts the string ending the person's life. But when the sisters refuse to not cut the string of Zeus' new girlfriend he curses them to continue their work, but away from Mt. Olympus and stuck on Earth with all the mortals. Cut to thousands of years later and the sisters are still weaving, measuring and cutting but now relegated to the 200th floor of a sky rise filled with work-a-day humans they try to avoid. But when Atropos meets Mickey (Eric Ankrim) the night security guard, their blossoming relationship could get in the way of her doing her job and spell doom for the world.

First let's discuss Hammond's book filled with magic. Maybe a bit too much magic as characters and plot points seem to appear and disappear for no reason. The show focuses mainly on Atropos and Mickey and their relationship and that's fine but from its previous incarnation I seem to recall much more story for the other two sisters as well as the fellow security guard O'Brien (Nathaniel Tenenbaum) and the cleaning lady Geneva (Bobbie Kotula) and those stories seem to have been abandoned making these characters just props. O'Brien and Geneva do get a moment at the end but it's a moment that was merely touched on at the beginning and then never spoken of again until the end giving it no build up or meaning. And the resulting story point with all three sisters just feels unsatisfying as nothing was really earned in the journey.

Gwon's songs are fun and some have some real power, but none latch onto you to blow you away or stay with you when you leave. Most just punctuate the moments that have just happened rather than move any story along and a few are repetitive superfluous fluff that drone on taking up time that could be used telling the story. Yes, we know "it's still snowing ... a lot".

Director Brandon Ivie has crafted a wonderful world with the help of a fantastic set from Tim Mackabee and lights from Robert J. Aguilar. And I have to mention some gorgeous costumes from Harmony Arnold.

Skerritt and Ankrim and fun as the romantic leads with their individual awkwardness and good chemistry and timing. Porkalob and Du Pree are also delightful, Porkalob with her childlike optimism and Du Pree with her fierce strength. I just wish they had more to do. And speaking of needing more to do, Kotula has one song but it's as the sister's mother, Night that doesn't move anything along and needed more for Geneva especially to flesh out her relationship with Tenenbaum as O'Brien who was hysterical and also way too underused as the one song he was in killed.

It seems Hammond and Gwon need to trim down the fluff and focus on telling the stories, all of them, as that glimmer of potential is still there, just even more buried than before. And so, with my three-letter rating system, I give Village Theatre's production of "String" a dissatisfied MEH+. Tons of talent and a cute story that needs to get dug out of its current show.

"String" performs at Village theater in Issaquah through April 22nd and then moves onto their Everett location running April 27th through May 20th. For tickets or information contact Village Theatre's Issaquah box office at 425-392-2202 or their Everett box office at 425-257-8600 or visit them online at www.villagetheatre.org.

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