I Sing!

Were Ross, Rachel and Joey ever to burst into song in one of their curiously spacious Manhattan apartments—while Will and Grace sang love duets across the hall—it would surely look and sound a lot like I Sing! What makes White Horse's fine production of it so fascinating is that rather than making the material look better than it is (which is usually the case in shows like this), the quality of the performances and direction underline the play's weaknesses.

Written by Forman, Bolin and Salka while in pre-real–world mode at Northwestern, the chamber-popshow concerns the comings and goings of five twentysomethings who fall in and out of love and brace themselves for the reality that one day one of their parents might die. The premise is too short to waste a cocktail napkin on, but the buoyancy of the score—influenced by composers William Finn and Jason Robert Brown—can't be denied.

Like countless storefront troupes, White Horse is green, broke (the set could be from a high-school show) and plenty earnest. But trafficking in musicals, it brings its A-game; the musical direction is consistently excellent. The way musical directors Ryan Brewster and Ethan Deppe blend a quintet of rich, unmiked voices with an electric keyboard that sounds—blessedly—nothing like an electric keyboard is a primer for every musicalcentric company in town.—Christopher Piatt