Christian Douglas and Sam Bolen in Midnight at The Never Get — Photo: Christopher Mueller
The songs speak volumes in Midnight at the Never Get (★★★★☆), expressing feelings that crooner Trevor Copeland (Sam Bolen) and pianist Arthur Brightman (Christian Douglas) might otherwise never admit to themselves, each other, or the world. Arthur writes the songs and Trevor sings them, but both of their stories, and an era of LGBTQ history, flow through their fateful collaboration.
The musical — conceived by Bolen, writer/composer/lyricist Mark Sonnenblick, and Max Friedman, who directed the original Off-Broadway production — depicts a version of Trevor and Arthur’s partnership as Trevor remembers it. His memory often fails him, as he regales his audience at the Never Get, a backroom boîte in Greenwich Village, with a tale of love, loss, and, he hopes, reunion.
Part solo reminiscence, part loving double act, the show offers a handful of wrenching plot twists that deepen Trevor’s stroll down selective memory lane. Director Matthew Gardiner stages the flashes back and sideways smoothly, with his handsome leads in tuxes always commanding the Never Get’s cabaret stage.
Ryan Hickey’s sound design doesn’t always serve the digital streaming presentation well — viewers might want to keep the volume control handy — but on the visual side, Adam Honoré’s lighting is gorgeous and full of character, while the film crew of Chiet Productions have done a wonderful job capturing the atmosphere and pacing of live performance.
Christian Douglas and Sam Bolen in Midnight at The Never Get — Photo: Christopher Mueller
Finessing every turn, Bolen takes his Trevor from joy to heartbreak and back again, usually in a single song, and certainly over the 95 minutes or so the singer spends baring his soul. Lending his songman the style of both chipper entertainer and fey, torchy crooner, Bolen creates a bright, distinctive musical persona in Trevor Copeland.
Well attuned to Sonnenblick’s jazzy score, he sounds big and confident backed by the full six-piece band, including Douglas, terrific on the piano, if a bit less so on the numbers where only the keys accompany him.
Sometimes, though, that quiver in Trevor’s voice merely tells more of the story of his and Arthur’s pained romance. What we see before us is “all that is left of Mr. Trevor Copeland,” according to an off-stage emcee, voiced by Bobby Smith, who also makes a powerful onstage appearance late in the show, in a character turn that adds even further dimension to this tale of “love irrational or unrequited.”
Taking off from the night in 1963 when the pair meet at a Greenwich Village bar, the script poignantly weaves ’60s gay and pop culture through their romance as both vivid background and motivation for character. Arthur and Trevor, headlining at a gay bar in an era when gay bars were illegal, disagree on how to be out and active in the gay rights movement. Arthur, convincingly played by Douglas as a gay man intent on upholding an image of manliness, nevertheless espouses some radical views.
While he preaches respectability politics to the rowdy hippies who crash their shows, he remains boldly queer, insisting that he and Trevor shouldn’t alter the pronouns or the meaning in their songs. They’re gay love songs, and should be sung that way.
“Don’t let the world shape our love, let our love shape the world,” he tells Trevor. Still, he might not have the strength and will to live up to his own words — and given Trevor’s hazy memory, he might not ever have said them.
Midnight at the Never Get is available on Marquee TV for streaming on-demand through June 21. Tickets for a 72-hour viewing window are $35. Visit www.sigtheatre.org.
The second half of the theater season always feels like the downhill rush of a roller coaster, a new hill coming into view just as you hit the dip, as local venues begin the time-honored ritual of announcing their upcoming seasons. Still, our focus here is on what's about to bloom -- and this year, that bloom is as big and bold as it gets.
A highlight is Shakespeare Theatre Company, showcasing Hamnet (no, not the movie), Suzy Eddie Izzard in a tour-de-force one-person Hamlet, and the great Wendell Pierce in the title role of Othello. (Pierce joins a notable Othello lineage at STC -- including, for those who remember, Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks.)
In an already storied career on stage and screen, Claybourne Elder has earned Grammy, SAG, and Drama Desk Award nominations, sung with symphony orchestras and Broadway divas, and soloed at Carnegie Hall.
Yet, the performer, known for theater roles on and off Broadway, and as the ill-fated John Adams on HBO's The Gilded Age, had never released a solo album, until now, with his sparkling debut If the Stars Were Mine. The question for some might be, if not necessarily what took so long, why now?
"I think that there have been several times I'd thought about doing it," Elder tells me during a relaxed chat over Zoom. "And I was like, 'Oh, no. I mean, who wants to listen to it?' The kind of imposter syndrome gets to you, and you're like, 'Well, I don't want to.'" There's also the challenge, he acknowledges, of working out what you might want to say over an album's worth of songs.
As Vanessa Williams, radiant as ever in sparkling gold, rose to accept her award as Signature Theatre's 2026 Sondheim Award honoree, a question came up at our table: "Do you think they'll hold the plane for her?"
The audience at Monday's black-tie Sondheim Award Gala, held for the fourth year at the Anthem on the Wharf, had already been informed Miss Williams had a plane to catch -- and soon. Currently starring as the ruthless Miranda Priestley in the West End production of the new musical The Devil Wears Prada, Williams needed to make that British Airways flight from Dulles to London in order to go on with the show the following night.
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