New Musical: Love Sick [SPOILERS]

I am always skeptical of new plays, symphonies, etc. You just don't know what you're going to get. That's why I tend to stick to the classics: Shakespeare, Beethoven, etc. But to support the DC JCC (they recently renovated their theater space), I bought a subscription to see four of their shows for their upcoming season.

Image found here

The first one was Love Sick, a new musical written by Ofra Daniel. I don't remember reading much about it beforehand; I think I skimmed the summary on the Theater J website. I just thought, "I've already bought a subscription, so I need to use the tickets. And with "love" in the title, it must be a romance story." Really, I had no expectations going into it.

Maybe it's because I didn't know what to expect, but I was BLOWN AWAY by this performance. It was AMAZING! Here's why:

• The program notes tell us that: "When Ofra Daniel sat down on Yom Kippur in 2015 to write a one-woman show based on the poetry of the Song of Songs, she was just trying to find an inexpensive way to fill a last-minute empty slot in the season of her startup theater company, Jewish Circle Theatre...[She said,] 'I thought if I compose the music from the poetry itself I don't need to pay royalties to anybody.'" I think that is such a good idea, to write music for ancient poems and use that as your inspiration to tell a love story. Brilliant! 
• Ofra Daniel not only wrote the play and composed some of the music, but she also is the main actress! She is incredibly talented. I was astounded by her acting, singing, dancing...When it comes to the arts, she can do it all!
• I always appreciate the minimal sets of Theater J. There's never too much going on, and it's not sparse either: it's just enough. The large tree at the center of the stage is a beautiful focal point, and it allows the Lover character a special spot in the heavens (if you will) as Tirzah (day)dreams about him. Crates are used throughout the set for multiple purposes: they act as chairs, beds, whatever the characters need at the moment. The actors have plenty of room around the stage to move and dance, but they also shape the set from scene to scene.
• The costumes, especially that of Tirzah (Daniel's character), are very effective. She starts off as an old beggar woman in the streets, covered in piles of rags. But as she tells her story, she removes layers of clothing, going back in time as she describes being a single girl to becoming a wife to coming into her own as a sensual, sexual, individual woman. Her hair mimics the change, too; it's covered in the beginning, then is in braids, and finally it falls long and free down her back. You can see the transformation through the photos below:

Images found here and here.

• The music is fantastic throughout the entire show; I wish they were selling CDs! Everyone could sing. My date said he could have seen any of the female cast members (Sarah Corey, Sarah Laughland, Kara-Tameika Watkins, and Kanysha Williams) sing the leading role. The musicians were just as good, and they were on stage throughout the performance, so they were both the set and characters all at once. I especially loved Ali Paris, who played the qanun; the instrument really set the "feel" for the show, and his voice as the Lover character was fitting; musicians can be so romantic. 
• Speaking of romantic, everything about this play is so passionate. Daniel as Tirzah is a young woman who is married to a man twice her age, and she has no children of her own. Her longing for something more is palpable, and that desire is unleashed when she begins to receive love letters from an anonymous stranger. These letters inspire something new inside of her, and she becomes more confident as a woman, displaying that desire out in the open, even inappropriately so. And when we learn that her husband has secretly written the letters, we really feel his love for her, just as equally as we feel her devastation when she learns the truth. So. Many. Feelings!

Here is a video that can give you a taste of what you're in for should you decide to go (keep in mind this video is from a different production, so the other actors/singers are different):

I can't recommend this musical enough. I would go and see it again, and I saw it less than a week ago. Buy your tickets now!!!

Here is DC Theatre Scene's review, which is also mostly positive.