Gender-expansive casting revitalizes William Finn’s New Brain, now being given the most gloriously imaginative of intimate revivals by Celebration Theatre at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Based on Finn’s own experience undergoing brain surgery for a life-threatening arteriovenous malformation, much of this autobiographical musical takes place in its protagonist’s mind as Finn stand-in Gordon Schwinn lies comatose, surrounded by family, colleagues, and loved ones. Sounds like a downer, right?

Wrong.

For anyone familiar with Finn’s Falsettos, it should come as no surprise that despite its serious subject matter, A New Brain features almost as many laughs as tears.

In addition, like Falsettos before it, A New Brain makes the gender of its lead couple (portrayed until now as a gay male couple) entirely incidental to their love story, treating them exactly as musicals have traditionally depicted male-female relationships in decades past.

All this makes A New Brain (music and lyrics by Finn, book by Finn and James Lapine) ideal for one of the nation’s oldest LGBTQIA+ theatres, particularly as reconceived for 2023 audiences by director Khanisha Foster, at the top of her game.

At lights up, we find acerbic-tongued songwriter Gordon Schwinn (non-binary actor Amanda Kruger as a non-binary Gordon) busy at work composing a new ditty for tyrannical children’s TV host Mr. Bungee (Richardson Cisneros-Jones) when they, Gordon, decide to take a break for lunch with their agent/best friend Rhoda (Sadé Ayodele).

Things suddenly take a dire turn when Gordon clutches their head, collapses into their plate of pasta, and is rushed to the hospital, where doctors inform them that their odds of surviving an operation are far from good.

Still, given that this is Gordan’s only real option, and fearful of dying before their best songs have been written, they agree to the surgery.

It takes a while for Gordon’s other half Roger Delli-Bovi (Yassi Noubahar), out sailing for the day, to be notified of her lover’s hospitalization, but once she’s gotten the scary news, she’s at Gordon’s bedside along with Gordon’s loving if overprotective mother Mimi (Gina Torrecilla).

Cared for by a rather abrasive doctor (Mitchell Johnson), the kind-hearted, weight-obsessed Nurse Richard (Ryan O’Connor), the cute but crabby Nurse Nancy (Gabi Van Horn), and a rather befuddled protestant minister (Jason Ryan), Gordon undergoes the operation and while comatose, has Felliniesque dreams peopled by the folks in their life, including the Homeless Lady (Whitney Avalon) they met on the way to lunch.

It is these fantastical dream sequences that allow director Foster and choreographer Alli Miller-Fisher free rein to let their imaginations soar, as does the entire production they’ve staged in the round at the intimate Davidson/Valentini Theatre.

It helps enormously that Finn’s songs include some of the most gorgeous he’s ever written (among them the infectious “Heart And Music,” the exquisite “Sailing,” and the heartbreaking “Just Go”), and his jauntier tunes are supremely catchy, including the finger-snapping “Gordo’s Law Of Genetics” and the equally invigorating “Sitting Becalmed in the Lee of Cuttyhunk,” staged here with entire cast lounging “becalmed” on folding pool chairs.

The production’s gender-expansive casting not only gives new shadings to its characters’ interrelationships, it also means hearing Gordon and Roger’s songs performed with higher register voices than they’ve been sung before, and the production’s arena staging means hearing Finn’s score in surround sound whenever cast climbs steps and ladders amidst the audience.

Equally importantly, gender-expansive casting opens the roles of Gordon and Roger to performers like Kruger, who’s feisty and fabulous in a part that has them never leaving the stage, and the bewitching, vocally blessed Noubahar, who’s got tons of romantic leads in her future.

Torrecilla is a veritable force of nature as Mimi, Avalon’s cantankerous homeless lady sings with the voice of an angel, Ciscneros-Jones is a deliciously creepy Mr. Bungee, and Johnson is a dynamic presence as Gordon’s bedside-manner-challenged brain surgeon.

O’Connor steals the show as the leggy Nurse Richard (who’s “Eating Myself Up Alive”), Ryan’s engaging Minister duets a powerhouse “Time and Music” with Kruger, Ayodele’s big-voiced Rhoda does the same with the manic Rhoda-Gordon duet “Whenever I Dream,” and Van Horn does delightful double duty as the bossiest of waitresses and the crankiest of nurses.

Scenic designer Stephen Gifford’s in-the-round set hides a stunning eleventh-hour surprise as do Allison Dillard’s alternately real-life/fanciful costumes, with Michael O’Hara providing an abundant supply of ingenious properties throughout, and all of the above lit to magical perfection by Matt Richter.

A New Brain sounds spectacular too thanks to music director extraordinaire Gregory Nabours, the production’s live four-piece orchestra*, and sound design whiz M. Glenn Schuster.

A New Brain is presented by Celebration Theatre in association with the Los Angeles LGBT Center and produced by Nathaniel Mathis. Mark Giberson is associate producer. Nico Pang is assistant director and Camal Pugh is assistant choreographer. Zack Payne and Rachel Flesher are co-fight and co-intimacy directors.

Casting is by Jami Rudofsky, CSA. Emily King Brown, Hannah Crews, Tal Fox, Laura Obiorah, Ryan, and Sal Sabella are covers/swings.

Amy Rowell is stage manager and Ruthie Geronimo is assistant stage manager. David Elzer is publicist.

Award-winning hits like The Color Purple, Cabaret, and The Boy From Oz have cemented Celebration Theatre’s reputation as one of L.A.’s premier producers of world-class musical theater. Carrying on this tradition of those musical masterpieces, A New Brain is Celebration at its crowd-pleasing, groundbreaking, remarkable best.

*Michaell Bustamante (reeds), Alec Glass (cello), Nabours (piano), Gianluca Palmieri (drums and percussion)

The Davidson/Valentini Theatre, L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Los Angeles.
www.celebrationtheatre.org
www.lalgbtcenter.org/tickets

–Steven Stanley
May 6, 2023
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: Celebration Theatre, James Lapine, Los Angeles Theater Review, William Finn