Director Michael Arden admits to having a good quantity of skepticism when he was approached in 2017 to stage the primary English-language iteration of “Maybe Happy Ending,” a South Korean musical a couple of romance between robots.
“I thought, What a nightmare. This sounds horrible,” Arden, a 2023 Tony winner for the Ben Platt-led revival of “Parade,” recalled to HuffPost. “And then I read and listened to it and was completely blown away and bowled over, and knew that I had to work on it. To me, it just felt like a play about human existence and how, when you love someone, you are ultimately signing up to lose them. Happiness only exists because of heartache.”
On Thursday, “Maybe Happy Ending” picked up 10 Tony Award nominations ― together with Greatest Musical, Greatest Course of a Musical for Arden and Greatest Actor in a Musical for certainly one of its principal stars, Darren Criss. It’s tied with “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Death Becomes Her” for essentially the most nominations of any present this season.
That includes a wistful, jazz-infused rating by Will Aronson and Hue Park, the musical follows a pair of “Helperbot” androids in near-future South Korea. The robots, Oliver (performed by Criss) and Claire (Helen J Shen in her Broadway debut), discover each other after they’ve been discarded by their house owners as they strategy the tip of their service lives.
“Maybe Happy Ending” marks Arden’s fifth Broadway musical as a director, however it’s his first that isn’t a revival. The present had its U.S. premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre in 2020, shortly earlier than the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In translating “Maybe Happy Ending” for an American viewers, Arden labored with Aronson and Park so as to add new songs and sharpen the characterization. The present’s core, nevertheless, stays largely intact from its authentic iteration.
“It was fun to think about what it would be like for an audience to have no idea what they were walking into,” Arden stated. “It was freeing, but a little scary.” His important purpose, he added, was to “make it more and more human as it went along, so that we hopefully forget they’re robots. As [Oliver and Claire] become more emotional beings, we had to let the sci-fi aspects go.”
Criss, whose theater credit embody “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “American Buffalo,” signed on to play Oliver as soon as the musical’s Broadway switch was introduced. Although the “Glee” and “American Crime Story” actor’s casting drew buzz, “Maybe Happy Ending” arrived at New York’s Belasco Theatre final November to restricted fanfare. Its success six months later might be attributed to natural word-of-mouth, making its Tony nominations and different accolades all of the extra rewarding for Arden and the remainder of the inventive group.
By way of its staging, “Maybe Happy Ending” offered quite a few challenges. Over the course of the present, Oliver and Claire journey from their respective Seoul dwellings to Jeju Island and again once more, considering love, loneliness and different feelings that seemingly exist past their digital constraints alongside the best way.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
A very chilling second is “Where You Belong,” by which Oliver displays on his formative years along with his proprietor, James (Marcus Choi). Noting that “half the scenery in the show is used within 90 seconds” of the tune, Arden stated, “That’s what memories are ― they’re fleeting. And I love that we get to really go there.”
In his Playbill bio, Arden dedicates “Maybe Happy Ending” to late actor Gavin Creel, who died final yr at age 48 from a uncommon type of most cancers. “If people take anything away from this show, it’s that we have an expiration date, and while we’re here, it’s our job to lift each other up,” Arden stated. “That’s what Gavin did every day of his life. He was the biggest cheerleader for me, and it seemed his spirit is in tune with what this play is about.”
Bruce Glikas by way of Getty Pictures
No matter how “Maybe Happy Ending” fares on the Tonys on June 8, Arden is already at work on two new musicals. The primary is a stage adaptation of the 2012 documentary “Queen of Versailles,” starring Kristin Chenoweth and set to open on Broadway in November. He’s additionally hooked up to direct “The Lost Boys,” based mostly on the 1987 horror-comedy movie and slated for a 2026 premiere.
Describing Chenoweth as a “lunatic genius,” Arden stated, “She’s the most tireless, positive, wonderful collaborator ― so smart, hysterically funny and cares so much about the art form. To get to explore the really complicated character of Jackie Siegel with her is a real delight.”
As for “The Lost Boys,” he added, “The greatest thing a musical can do is inspire an audience to think about how they function and move through the world in a new way. And to do that in a vampire musical that’s also a story about family and how we break the cycle of trauma is pretty rad.”
