The Notebook
April 15, 2024
“If this is love, I’m not ready,” sings Young Allie in The Notebook, the new musical in performances at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. The song, a soaring anthem of self-discovery, is sure to be a favorite at karaoke nights and auditions and left most audience members inspired, clapping and cheering for the young protagonist. It left this critic rooted to her chair and thinking, “If this is love, I don’t get it.”
I’ve never considered The Notebook a love story. I’ve seen the movie once and never read the 1996 novel by Nicholas Sparks. In fact, I’ve never read anything by the best-selling author of weepy novels because I try to avoid commercial love stories. I almost never find them romantic. Often, I find them formulaic or sad, portraits of stalking and manipulation if the love is unreciprocated, or codependency if it is.
Still, I vowed to watch The Notebook with an open mind. Years had passed since I saw the film, and perhaps a musical adaptation, with the benefit of expressing emotion through song, would offer new insight or untapped emotions.
That The Notebook is a tear jerker – so much that branded packages of tissues are sold inside the theater – is news to no one. Nor is the story itself, so the evaluation of this musical is not what story is told, but how. Noah and Allie meet as teenagers, fall in love and are separated by her wealthy, classist parents. They reunite years later, just before Allie is about marry someone else. Older Noah recounts the story to Older Allie, who lives in a nursing home and suffers from dementia. His reading from the titular notebook is an attempt to trigger Allie’s memory of her life with him.
Joy Woods, left, and Ryan Vasquez as Middle Allie and Noah
On paper, it sounds moving – even romantic. But the musical, featuring music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson and a book by Bekah Brunstetter, does nothing to heighten the story’s emotions; instead it dilutes them. What is supposed to be tumultuous teenage love fades into a placid and predictable formula that only ripples with sporadic passion.
That Noah and Allie will end up together is a given; the audience sees the Middle versions of the couple happily together and pregnant. With no suspense in the plot, the musical must inspire enough investment in Noah and Allie to wonder how they end up together, rather than just if.
Brunstetter’s book, which intersperses flashbacks of Young (Jordan Tyson, energetically lovely, and John Cardoza, sweet-voiced) and Middle (Joy Wood, poised and powerful, and Ryan Vasquez, broodingly handsome) Allie and Noah, fails to excite such investment. Their supposedly great love begins when they spot each other on the beach during summer vacation. Soon Noah is not only declaring that he is falling in love with her but informing her that they will end up together. Allie is skeptical at first, but is duetting with him by the end of the song. Their teenage infatuation is charming, yes, but is unbelievable as real love.
In the musical, as in the movie, Noah appears to love the idea of Allie, rather than the actual person. (Thankfully, Brunstetter omitted one wretched romantic trope – the scene in which Noah hangs from a Ferris wheel, threatening to let go until Allie agrees to a date with him.) Allie contains a bit more depth as she rebels against her parents and continues to see Noah, but that’s not saying much.
Michael Grief and Schele Williams’ direction, along with Katie Spelman’s choreography, attempt to depict the overlapping memories by moving all three couples onstage simultaneously, seemingly haunting each other. (Older Allie, moving among her younger selves, struggling with confusion and fear, provides one of the truly moving moments.) While this vision of time’s fluidity is intriguing at first, enhanced by Ben Stanton’s atmospheric lighting, it quickly tires because none of the three pairs feel like authentic people or partners. Young Allie and Noah are cutely endearing, Middle Allie and Noah are lustful and Older Allie and Noah are devoted – so devoted that Older Noah refuses to remain in a hospital bed after a stroke because, as he tells the worried nurse, “I have to see my wife,” for fear of missing her moment of remembrance. Such dedication may seem admirable, but I – a frequent visitor of hospitals – found it pitiable and worried about his physical health.
Maryann Plunkett, Joy Woods and Jordan Tyson as three iterations of Allie
Little else is provided, either in book or song, to the otherwise lightweight production, whose ambiguity is further personified by David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis’ set, which attempts to evoke various settings but fulfills none of them. Allie’s parents (Andrea Burns and Charles E. Wallace), her fiancé (Chase Del Rey) and Noah’s friends (Dorcas Leung and Hillary Fisher) fare even worse, as do the staff at the hospital (Carson Stewart and Yassmin Alers ).
Michaelson’s score is fluid, but also flighty, perhaps an attempt to capture the essence of time passing, but the songs do little to further the plot or characterizations. Middle Allie’s performance of what clearly intended to be the eleven o’clock number, “My Days,” is passionate, but the song – supposedly capturing Allie’s epiphany of happiness and fulfillment – lacks clarity or a substantial message. She sings ecstatically about rebellion and freedom but we never learn what freedom means to her. The song’s impact is further lessened because her decision is simply which man to be with.
The lack of cohesion is obvious during other moments as well; when Allie sees Noah undressed for the first time, her response is to sing, “Oh my God, he’s just standing there, and oh my God, he’s got chest hair.” Cardoza is certainly handsome, but he does not, in fact, have chest hair. Such an observation may seem trivial, but it was one of the few lasting ones of The Notebook that remained with me.