Off-B'way Review: Midnight; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Todrick Hall and Jeremy Beloate
in Midnight.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

You have to admire Todrick Hall’s ambition. The YouTube star and veteran of five Broadway shows and several reality TV programs has the rare distinction of directing, choreographing, writing the book, music, and lyrics, producing and playing the lead role in a new Off-Broadway musical Midnight. Just getting an original show with a cast of 20 up and running is a difficult feat in today’s challenging theatrical economy and Hall deserves full marks for that. However, the production itself could have benefitted for at least one more set of eyes and a red pencil. Clocking in at close to three hours, this musical fantasy on race relations and suppressed gay love is too long, monotonous and self-indulgent. There are impactful and well-performed individual moments, but they are drowned in a sea of excess.

Hall’s premise is intriguing and the opening number sets the stage for a promising evening. A huge clock is suspended above the stage (Morgan Large designed the imaginative set) as well as several mannequins sporting Beck Jones’ gorgeous and elaborate costumes. The cast consisting of an equal number of white and African-American performers enters in rehearsal clothes, the mannequins descend, and the actors sing of assuming identities as they don Civil War-era garb defining their roles along racial lines. 

The subsequent story follows a slave named Rail (Hall)—his monicker derives from his birth near train tracks—and his illicit same-sex affair with the white landowner and master Richard (The Voice finalist Jeremy Beloate). Their clandestine trysts occur at the titular hour, thus the ominous timepiece dominating the action. Hall’s direction moves the action along swiftly and engagingly (aided greatly by Jake DeGroot’s dynamic lighting) and many of Hall’s songs are soaring and effective, but the characters act as if it’s 2026 instead of 1862. Would black slaves really serve their white enslavers a dead mouse on top of the dessert? (The move was probably inspired by Octavia Spencer’s character’s hilarious act of gastronomic revenge against her white employer in The Help.)  Would a white Southern landowner really encourage black slaves and white workers to treat each other as equals while the Civil War raged? 

Todrick Hall and Charlotte Odusanya
in Midnight.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

In the fantastical second act, the black and white characters switch places—through a magical wish by Rail maybe, though how this transformation is accomplished is never made clear. The whole business, too long by at least 30 minutes, ends with the cast relating historical evidence on secret interracial, gay relationships and advances in sexual and racial minority rights, capped by a post-curtain call encore song of harmony (also too long.)

Despite the caricatured nature of their roles, the cast are given ample opportunity to display their impressive vocal skills and dramatic versatility as they take on opposite personae. Bella Coppola is particularly impressive as a desperate Southern belle passed over by too many beaus in the first act and a defiant, no-nonsense slave woman in the second, making each role alive with vivid details. Kolbi Jordan makes a devastating impact as the same slave character in the first act. Her delivery of just one angry line, “Don’t talk to me” is the truest moment in the whole show.

Ayanna George conveys matriarch Ethel’s maternal love and delivers some thrilling vocals. Autumn Hurlbert is comically arch, Charlotte Odusanya is alternately sweet and sharp in her dual roles, and Kennedy Caughell is equally persuasive as her opposite. Hall himself is an impressive performer, stager and writer, but he has spread himself too thin in this mixed Midnight.  

Kelsee Kimmel and Andrew Durand
in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Credit: Joan Marcus

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (at the Public after Olivier Award-winning runs in London) is another fantasy-based musical but this has a stronger and more consistent concept. Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald story which served as the basis for the 2008 film starring Brad Pitt, Benjamin Button’s central conceit is that a man can be born as an elderly, fully-grown specimen of 80 and age backwards. If you accept that, the rest is easy to follow. Like Todrick Hall, Jethro Compton wears many hats in this production. Book-writer Compton (who also directs and collaborated on the lyrics with composer Darren Clark) has changed the setting from New Orleans in the movie to a fishing village on the coast of Cornwall. 

Compton’s engaging and lively staging has the versatile 11-member cast play multiple roles and all the instruments, save for the amazing Andrew Durand who in his sole assignment as Benjamin miraculously transforms from sagacious senior to frolicsome child. Compton also designed the atmospheric, wooden set upon he stages the action, story-theater style. Narration is distributed, actors switch genders and even species (one plays a sheep). The tuneful score emphasizes feisty folk melodies and weaves in and under Benjamin’s adventures which take him into across the sea, into World War II, and back again to village in time to witness the moon landing. 

In addition to Durand’s sturdy lead, Kelsee Kimmel makes for a bristly and boisterous love interest (as well as that sheep) and the rest of ensemble handle their instruments and roles with buoyant excitement. They convincingly buy into the fanciful premise, taking us on a fast-paced, thoughtful journey examining the mysteries of aging and time itself.

Midnight: Oct. 15—Jan. 3, 2027. Daryl Roth Theater, 101 E. 15th St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 45 mins. including intermission. telecharge.com.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Oct. 21—Dec. 20. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 30 mins including intermission. publictheater.org.