Ordinary Days is a musical that plays out on a small scale.  The cast is small – just 4 people.  The instrumentation is small – a single piano played live.  The conflicts are small – will or won’t two couples in New York stay together.  But Ordinary Days knows it scale, and is thoroughly charming for it.

Ordinary Days follows two New York City couples.  Warren, who works for an artist, and Deb, a bitter graduate student, have the typical meet-cute rom-com story.  He’s got an interest in other people’s life story, but she’s got a Big Picture that she can’t quite see herself in. 

Jason and Claire, on the other hand, have been dating for a while, but a year after moving in together are trying to figure out if they can fit each other into their lives, or if there are things they can’t just let go.

The story plays out in minor moments – handing out flyers on the street, meeting a stranger for coffee, wandering a museum. 

Director Cassandra Tse uses business and contrast to maximum effect.  The actors cross back and forth across the space, their sharp turns filling out the space to simulate NYC’s – or even Wellington CBD’s – crowded streets.  Aaron’s Blackledge’s lighting design and cueing is subtle and supportive, cueing as often off the piano score as the actors.  The switch from major to minor key, for example, might be matched with a dip in lighting levels to soften from a hard-edged anger to a listless sadness. 

The cast have some tricky jobs to do.  Michael Stebbings plays the eternal optimist Warren with a here-it-comes/ there-it-goes nasality that is frankly distracting, but nails his absorption in ideas.  Brigid Boyle plays Deb, the frustrated grad student, with a contrast of fragility and aggression familiar to anyone trawling campus bars or grad student offices.  She switches from a pure sweet mezzo-soprano to an aggressive glottal fry within the space of a single note. 

Martin Tidy’s Jason has a thankless job, showing us the one in the relationship who is sure when his partner isn’t.  Laura Loach’s Claire is restrained until her final number, which resonates for being simply underplayed.  However, the nature of the show means we see fairly little between Claire and Jason; they are rarely onstage together and almost never sing to each other.  And a late decision to hold off Jason’s response to Claire’s moment of vulnerability leaves me as an audience member devastated for her, but deeply skeptical about them. 

Half the joy of a musical, however, is seeing people singing their hearts out about whatever conflict we see. Adam Gwon’s score alternates between singer /songwriter style ballads and musical theatre show-stoppers.  Michael Stebbings, who also directs the music, has done excellently at getting everything to feel like it belongs in a pop musical world, but the production is hampered by a lack of strong belting.  It feels less like an effort to match the space, and more like a lack of training to really fill out the sound.  The exception perhaps is Brigid Boyle, who is willing to let us watch her push the sound out. 

With a musical of such a delicate scale, perhaps it isn’t surprising that the sound matches. Still, as a lovely example of a chamber musical, and a delicately moving one, you’d be harder pressed to find a better example in Wellington.

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