Hello Again

How many pantomimed orgasms can you watch in one night? Apple Tree is guessing around ten, and delivers accordingly in Hello Again, a series of sneakily interlocking musical vignettes about love and lust. Hopscotching back and forth throughout each decade of the 20th century, LaChiusa orchestrates a musical game of hot potato as archetypical American characters (a WWII soldier, a repressed '50s housewife, a '70s disco rat) meet, mix and part.

LaChiusa's score is dense, and director Boevers exploits every nuance, comic and dramatic. Stacking the deck with a cast of triple threats certainly helps; the voices in this ensemble are simply gorgeous and technically impressive. Sherrill is a standout, with her huge voice and deft characterizations. Another scene-stealer is Adkins, whose aspiring screenwriter delivers the show's emotional high point with a heart-rending mix of smarmy attitude and soul-searing desperation.

But can a veritable tapas bar of musical niblets really satisfy? Boevers's production is smooth as silk and delivers plenty of laughs, yet there's a strangely mechanical feel to the proceedings. That's most likely due to Hello Again's stock characters, who are meant to represent the decades in which they live and love. It is hard to become engrossed with lovers who are, by their nature, generic. Clearly, LaChiusa intends to bring it all home in the last scene, which neatly folds the last story back into the first. But it ends up feeling just a bit like a gimmick, an intellectual game posing as la grand passion.—Kay Daly