Reviewed by:

• Stereophonic by David Adjmi
• Elizabeth L. Wollman

When Stereophonic began previews in October 2023, David Adjmi argued that despite its setting in a 1970s recording studio and its focus on a newly famous rock group under pressure to top the success of their debut album, the piece was not a musical, but instead a “play with music.” The playwright professed an “allergy” to musicals, which to him reflected a “calcified idea” of “how music should feel in the theatre.” Such a distaste for musicals is standard among theatremakers who mine aspects of the rock world for the stage; more often than not, musicals are loudly dismissed as too commercial and formalistic to properly capture rock’s purportedly superior artistic “realness.”

Theatre critics tend to blithely accept and regurgitate such rockist attitudes. It’s no big surprise, then, that virtually every critic covering Stereophonic followed Adjmi’s lead by eschewing the musical theatre label as inaccurate for a show so authentic that it defied traditional descriptors. In his rave for the Washington Post, Peter Marks called Stereophonic “one of the best works of narrative art about the day-to-day grind and emotional toll of artistic creation,” compared aspects of it to those of Waiting for Godot, and described its characters as “refugees from classic drama.” The New York Times’ Jesse Green gushed that terms like “play with music,” “musical,” and even amalgams like “playical” fail Stereophonic, which never foundered, “as most theatrical treatments of the artistic process do, on either side of the genre divide.” Vulture’s Jackson McHenry likened Stereophonic to a “fugue” built of naturalistic threads that together wove “incandescent art.” “If you’ve recently tried to sate yourself with imitation-crab rock-history dramatizations like Daisy Jones and the Six,” he assured his readers, “you’ll find that Stereophonic is, refreshingly, the real thing.”

Don’t tell McHenry, but Stereophonic is more a companion to Daisy Jones than it is an artistically superior achievement to the television miniseries. Both are accessible entertainments that allow for fly-on-the-wall views of beautiful, overwhelmingly white musicians who fall in and out of love, swill and snort to excess, and argue, sometimes bitterly, as they toil away at making music together. Most obviously, both use Fleetwood Mac’s most celebrated lineup (drummer Mick Fleetwood, pianist/vocal-ist Christine McVie, bassist John McVie, guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, singer Stevie Nicks) as a springboard, even as Daisy centers women’s experiences and has the luxury of many episodes with which to diverge from the source material. Stereophonic remains rooted in male perspectives and hews more closely to actual events that took place during the recording of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours: the unnamed band’s two couples hit the skids during a long stretch on an unlimited budget in a recording studio; the drummer’s long-distance marriage collapses; drugs, booze and endless retakes amp up the resentments and melodrama.

Eli Gelb (Grover) and Andrew R. Butler (Charlie) in Stereophonic. (Photo: Chelcie Parry.)

Stereophonic had many strengths that distracted from its conventional plot, especially in performance and direction. The production generated real entertainment [End Page 223] by delving into some of the most repetitive, boring aspects of recording. Lavish attention to period detail abounded: the single set—a mid-1970s studio in Sausalito, California (where Fleetwood Mac happened to record Rumours)—was meticulously designed by David Zinn, with the recording booth upstage and control room downstage. Knit blankets and earth-toned throw pillows festooned mocha-brown corduroy furniture; packs of smokes, lighters, girlie magazines, beer bottles, and a hilariously substantial bag of coke littered the tables. Costume designer Enver Chakartash outfitted the cast in groovy fringed vests, psychedelic peasant blouses, patterned bell-bottoms, suede boots, and beaded moccasins.

Andrew R. Butler (Charlie), Sarah Pidgeon (Diana), Chris Stack (Simon), and Juliana Canfield (Holly) in Stereophonic. (Photo: Chelcie Parry.)

Breathless paeans to the authenticity of the music notwithstanding, Stereophonic’s songs and song...

 审阅者：

• 
  David Adjmi 的立体声
•  伊丽莎白·沃尔曼

当《Stereophonic》于 2023 年 10 月开始预演时，大卫·阿吉米 (David Adjmi) 辩称，尽管该作品以 1970 年代的录音室为背景，并且重点关注一个新近成名的摇滚乐队，他们面临着首张专辑成功的压力，但该作品不是音乐剧，而是一部音乐剧。 “玩音乐。”这位剧作家声称自己对音乐剧“过敏”，这对他来说反映了“音乐在剧院中应该如何感受”的“钙化观念”。对音乐剧的这种厌恶是戏剧制作人的标准，他们将摇滚世界的各个方面挖掘到舞台上。音乐剧常常被大声斥责，因为它过于商业化和形式主义，无法正确捕捉摇滚乐据称卓越的艺术“真实性”。

戏剧评论家往往乐于接受并反驳这种摇滚态度。因此，几乎所有报道《立体声》的评论家都追随阿吉米的脚步，回避音乐剧这个标签，因为它对于一个如此真实、违背传统描述的节目来说是不准确的，这也就不足为奇了。彼得·马克斯在对《华盛顿邮报》的赞誉中称《立体声》是“最好的叙事艺术作品之一，讲述了艺术创作中日复一日的磨砺和情感付出”，并将其与《等待戈多》进行了比较，并描述了它的角色是“经典戏剧的难民”。 《纽约时报》的杰西·格林滔滔不绝地说，“玩音乐”、“音乐性”，甚至像“戏剧性”这样的混合词都失败了，立体声从未失败过，“就像艺术过程中大多数戏剧处理所做的那样，在任何方面，立体声都是如此”。类型划分。” Vulture 的杰克逊·麦克亨利 (Jackson McHenry) 将立体声比作由自然主义线索构成的“赋格曲”，这些线索共同编织出“炽热的艺术”。 “如果你最近尝试过模仿螃蟹摇滚历史的戏剧，比如《黛西琼斯和六人组》，”他向读者保证，“你会发现立体声是令人耳目一新的真实事物。”

别告诉麦克亨利，《立体声》更多的是黛西琼斯的伴侣，而不是电视迷你剧的艺术成就。两者都是易于上手的娱乐活动，可以让您欣赏到美丽的、绝大多数白人音乐家一起努力创作音乐时的相爱、失恋、酗酒和吸鼻涕，以及争吵（有时甚至是激烈的争吵）。最明显的是，两人都以 Fleetwood Mac 最著名的阵容（鼓手 Mick Fleetwood、钢琴家/歌手 Christine McVie、贝斯手 John McVie、吉他手/歌手 Lindsey Buckingham、歌手 Stevie Nicks）作为跳板，尽管 Daisy 以女性经历为中心，并拥有许多情节与源材料有所不同。 《立体声》仍然植根于男性视角，并且更贴近 Fleetwood Mac 1977 年专辑《Rumours》录制期间发生的实际事件：这支不知名乐队的两对夫妇在录音室的预算无限的情况下长期陷入困境；鼓手的异地婚姻破裂；毒品、酗酒和无休止的重蹈覆辙加剧了怨恨和情节剧。

立体声中的伊莱·盖尔布（格罗弗）和安德鲁·R·巴特勒（查理）。 （照片：切尔西·帕里。）

《立体声》有许多与传统情节不同的优点，特别是在表演和导演方面。该作品通过深入研究录音中一些最重复、最无聊的方面，产生了真正的娱乐[结束第 223 页]。对时代细节的重视比比皆是：单一场景——位于加利福尼亚州索萨利托的 1970 年代中期录音室（Fleetwood Mac 恰好在那里录制《Rumours》）——由 David Zinn 精心设计，录音室在后台，控制室在后台。摩卡棕色灯芯绒家具上装饰着针织毛毯和土色抱枕；桌子上散落着一包包香烟、打火机、少女杂志、啤酒瓶和一大袋可乐。服装设计师恩维尔·查卡塔什 (Enver Chakartash) 为演员们设计了时髦的流苏背心、迷幻的农家衬衫、图案喇叭裤、绒面革靴子和串珠莫卡辛鞋。

《立体声》中的安德鲁·R·巴特勒（查理）、莎拉·皮金（戴安娜）、克里斯·斯塔克（西蒙）和朱莉安娜·坎菲尔德（霍莉）。 （照片：切尔西·帕里。）

尽管人们对音乐的真实性赞不绝口，但 Stereophonic 的歌曲和歌曲......