If Thornton Wilder were still alive to write a rock opera about five musicians dealing with issues of love, life, death, and what comes after, he might choose to title it Our Band. Stefan Marks calls his play-with-songs Middle8, and for anyone who’s seen the playwright-actor-director-musician-designer’s past work, it should come as no surprise that Middle8 is label-defyingly special.

 Musicians will tell you that the term “middle eight” refers to song’s bridge, the eight bars that re-grab your attention before the final chorus kicks in. To geographers, the words “middle eight” might suggest Missouri, one of only two states to be surrounded by eight others, and the five musicians whose lives we’ll be following just happen to come from Kansas City, Mo. And perhaps not coincidentally, all five have reached the middle of their lives.

 Indeed, it’s the upcoming 40th birthday of keyboardist Adam (Matt Kaminsky) that prompts the still aspiring composer-librettist to abandon plans to write Middle Hate, a Romeo-and-Juliet-style musical set in the war-torn Middle East, for a two-week reunion with his former bandmates, a vacation he owes to his wife Cassidy’s (Brittany Joyner) generosity in letting hubby skip this summer’s family holiday.

The unexpected reunion gets Adam to thinking. What if he and his buddies were to write their own autobiographical musical together, something they could all leave behind when they die?

 Along for the ride are:

Curmudgeonly mortician/guitarist Chris (Marks) (“I don’t like my kids. They’re not nice people. They don’t like me. I don’t really care.).

Formerly insanely wealthy lead guitarist Lee (Ken Weiler). (“I think if I was still as rich as I used to be, I wouldn’t have come back for Adam’s 40th.”)

 No longer drug-dealing bass guitarist Bobby (Brett Pearsons), given a reason to learn American Sign Language when he meets gorgeous coffee-lover Defloria (Jules Dameron)

Drummer Killian (Geoff Dunbar), terrific at percussion but not so good with words. (“He was always really quiet.”)

 Adam is first to admit that his rock opera, one he intends to call Middle8, has so much jumping back and forth in time that it can be difficult to follow who’s alive and who isn’t (his words, not mine, though they do prove somewhat true), but that’s part of Middle8’s rules-breaking charm.

So are its Broadway-musical-style fantasy sequences, including one that has a trio of 40-year-olds trying to remake themselves as a hip-hop boy band, and several engaging videos (courtesy of Stephen Epstein), one of which reveals just how far the Middle8 cast go back in real life.

Marks writes with a quirky, dry, often outrageous sense of humor tempered with raw honesty as Middle8 deals with aging and failure and the tension that can develop even between the best of friends.

 Add to that a wedding, some funerals, and a powerful all-signed sequence (just one of several scenes likely to bring an audience to tears) and you’ve got a play as one-of-a-kind as Marks’s Space was a couple years back.

The playwright has built his latest work around his thirty-year friendship with college classmates Dunbar, Kaminsky, Pearsons, and Weiler (aka The Four Postmen), just one reason why performances prove so authentic, from Kaminsky’s deeply felt Adam to Weiler’s tell-it-like-it-is Lee to Marks’s unapologetically sardonic Chris to Pearson’s unexpectedly touching Bobby, with Dunbar contributing some occasional, amusingly wordless pop-ins.

Joyner is a radiant Cassidy with vocal chops to match and Dameron expresses as much with her hands and eyes as most do with spoken words.

 Scenic designers Mark Svastics and Marks keep their set simple, with an effective use of five hanging drapes, particularly when Svastics’ lighting design kicks in. Paula Higgins has designed some character-defining costumes and Ron Wood deserves snaps for his crystal-clear sound design. Darcy Silveira is Cassidy alternate.

The Thornton Wilder connection may not be apparent until Middle8’s final, powerful minutes, but like Our Town before it, Stefan Marks’s latest will get you both pondering and appreciating the life you are given, its highs and lows, its joys and sorrows. Oh, and it’s got some terrific songs to boot.

Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood.
www.fourpostmen.com/middle8

–Steven Stanley
November 17, 2018
Photos: Baranduin Briggs

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Stefan Marks, Stella Adler Theatre, The Four Postmen