BEGIN AGAIN at the Old Globe: A Smooth, Luminous Production

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A song in New York... yet again.

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Another year, another musical, another person with a song to sing, to strum, to otherwise consume or be consumed by in the city that never sleeps.

Mayhaps you’ve heard this melody before, or else seen it on screen. That our subject is a musical with the title BEGIN AGAIN feels very apt.

With an idea sprung from the ever-tuneful mind of John Carney (and adapted from his 2013 film), the musical BEGIN AGAIN remains an homage to dreams, redemption and the ways that the power of music can bridge the aforementioned. For the world premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, book writers Jenna Clark Embrey and Molly Beach Murphy are working with composer/lyricist Pat Monahan and Jerry Becker and Matt Musty of the band Train (an association which this production never, and I mean never, lets us forget). Director Loren Latarro’s production is smooth and lovely, ablaze in song and possessed of some choice bites of visual dazzle that give the production its dreaminess. In leading actors Emma Busse , Patrick Heusinger , Kevin William Paul , Charlotte MacLeod and Casey Whyland , director Latarro has built a winning foundation that the play’s ensemble members more than compliment. Scenic designer Derek McLane , Lighting Designer Amanda Zieve and illusion creator Skylar Fox package it all up in a Big Apple-bedecked bow and let it play.

Thus, we are swept through the boroughs, across the shells of skyscrapers, into the brightly-hued bustle of Times Square, to a carousel in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood and ultimately back to the rooftop of a Queens apartment for a finale in which the fading light illuminates a beautiful skyline. There’s a kickin’ number at the West 4th Street basketball courts, and every opportunity is taken to get people rattling and shimmying along as they ride a subway car. Because in a story about a songwriter recording an album, guerilla style, set to the authentic street sounds of New York, this city has to be a player. McLane and company make it so.

The action actually starts at an open mic night in an anywhere-ish looking bar where an enthusiastic host Stevie (played by Casey Whyland ) urges her friend Gretta ( Emma Busse ) to pick up a guitar and show what she’s got. Reluctantly, Gretta agrees. “This is a pretty new song,” she says. The number, “The Song I Used to Know” immediately blows the mind of a barfly who experiences it not just from Gretta’s solo guitar, but backed and enhanced by several other instruments as well. Time jumps backwards to Gretta, newly arrived in the city from Eerie, PA singing a different song, “Don’t Let Go” with her pretty boy boyfriend Max ( Kevin William Paul ) with whom Gretta is head over feet in love. The song is a gift to him. They post it; it goes viral.

In the space of about 10 minutes, by the by, we have heard Gretta singing in three different ways – publicly, privately and remixed and remastered to the ninety-nines by that guy in the bar who – come to learn – wants to make her the star that she should be. The story will play out and she will sing a lot more. Busse, a one-time AMERICAN IDOL contestant with several regional musical theater credits possesses the drive of an underdog and a lovely, soaring voice. BEGIN AGAIN plays to her vocal and performance strengths

But back to the tale. Max lands a recording contract on the strength of Gretta’s song, but the label wants him alone, not his unknown songwriter. Things are moving fast for Max and Gretta graciously steps aside. Somewhere across town, that guy we saw in the bar, Dan ( Patrick Heusinger ) stumbles hung over into the record studio that he founded, only to learn that he’s been fired. Fine by Dan since the quality of “artists” he’s been hearing recently has left him dispirited and burnt out. Serendipitously, burnt-out Dan and Gretta who has hit not quite rock bottom (though that’s coming) fatefully end up back at that open mic night. When Dan hears Gretta sing, his faith is restored. “I’m in” he tells the woman who insists that she’s a songwriter, not a singer. We’ve heard her. We’re in too.

Gretta’s new song has enough promise for Dan to take it to his label, but not quite enough to get a deal. So Dan hatches the full album on the streets of New York plan and starts recruiting musicians to join the effort. And across the city we go. Among the musical enlistees is Dan’s teenage daughter Violet ( Charlotte MacLeod ) who plays bass guitar and with whom he has been largely estranged since her dad split with his music journalist wife, Miriam ( Adrienne Walker ).

The two parallel redemptions story are intended to give BEGIN AGAIN more gravitas than it rightfully has earned. Max hasn’t just dumped all over Gretta’s artistic dream, he’s also broken her heart, to the point where after seeing a video of him in Times Square, she shuts down. Dan, meanwhile, is an alcoholic and potentially suicidal…until he heard Gretta and joined her project. Heusinger makes for a likeable enough bad boy who tends to put screams into his songs. Of the two men in Gretta’s life, he’s clearly the one who can help heal her, and vice versa. Paul and Whyland do solid work as, respectively, the boyfriend and the best friend.

Fittingly, this musical has a marvelous score with tunes equally rousing, swooning and ear wormy. In addition to the two scene and character-establishing numbers, the lovely, nearly instrumental “Splitter Ballet” is another winner. Working with the orchestrations and arrangements by Brian Usifer , Music Director Matt Deitchman ’s five-person band make this a soundtrack to savor. Not sure how these songs will go down with the Trainiacs, but the urge to have folks whistling or playing a few bars of “Hey, Soul Sister” or “50 Way to Say Goodbye” proved too compelling to resist.

Clearly, the purveyors of musical theater are not close to being done crooning across the Empire State. I do realize that BEGIN AGAIN is not Alicia Keys ’ HELL’S KITCHEN is not TWO STRANGERS (CARRY A CAKE ACROSS NEW YORK), but maybe we’re due for a tale that takes place in, I dunno, Denver? Or not. The calendar will flip and, in the spring, this same San Diego stage will host the world premiere of another chasing the song in New York property: the musical adaptation of AUGUST RUSH directed by Kathleen Marshall .

BEGIN AGAIN continues through October 18 at 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Pafk, San Diego.

Photo of the company by Jeff Lorch

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/los-angeles/article/Review-BEGIN-AGAIN-at-the-Old-Globe-Theatre-20260925)._