Review: Court Theatre’s ‘Out Here’ searches for, rather than delivers, a coherent score

It’s best not to think of the likably quirky but not-yet-fully-realized new work “Out Here” as musical theater in the traditional sense, even though it may be impossible to avoid those expectations. After all, it possesses all the trappings of the form: a family story, characters who sing, a small orchestra, a recognizable house setting, all offered at a very traditional venue — the Court Theatre — as part of its subscription theater season.

But “Out Here” is often less like, say, “Falsettos”— a 2024 Court hit to which this bears some surface resemblances — and closer to a music/theater version of work from form-pushing experimentalists like clown/theater troupe 500 Clown and dance/theater company Lucky Plush. That makes sense, since Leslie Buxbaum, who worked extensively with both of those groups, wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics with composer Erin McKeown.

Buxbaum’s bio even refers to a current project with Lucky Plush, a take on Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” a play that seems a direct inspiration for the way “Out Here” dissolves the fourth wall from the start and searches for, rather than delivers, a coherent score.

As the show opens, a 50-ish woman named Dawn (Becca Ayers), her husband, Brian (Cliff Chamberlain), and their 16-year-old daughter, Cleo (Ellie Duffey), all hear a repetitive musical sound. Their first thought is that it’s one of their phones, but after ruling that out, they investigate the microwave, then the dishwasher. Finally, Cleo looks out the imaginary window, straight at the audience.

“Mom, Dad,” she says. “There are people here.”

After a few attempts to define exactly why they have an audience — and a surprise band on the second level of their house! — they simply accept and begin, self-consciously, to introduce themselves and their lives.

Soon, Cleo is sent out of the room for a more traditional scene — albeit one where neither character is quite sure whether they’re singing or talking — where Dawn informs Brian that she wants both of them to have joy and therefore the marriage needs to end.

Over the next 90 minutes or so, some additional narrative will follow: We’ll meet Dawn’s ex and, everyone else but Dawn seems sure, her true love Robin (Bethany Thomas) and Robin’s nonbinary young adult child Jett (Z Mowry), as well as a love interest for Brian named Gina (Amanda Pulcini), who emerges from, yes, the audience.

In terms of story, if that sounds exceedingly generic, it sure is. The creative elements here focus less on making us know or care about the characters than riffing — as a dance or clown act might — on themes such as change and the resistance to it, divorce as a complex mediation (with Alex Goodrich stepping in from the band when a mediator is called for), and life as an improvisation where you can't go back.

McKeown’s varied music — sometimes melodic, sometimes dissonant — forms songs that are frequently, and intentionally, incomplete, as characters unsuccessfully seek to express their feelings, their intentions or even just their thoughts. Dawn ultimately becomes the clear main character — nothing seems to be stopping her joy other than herself — but nearly everyone else gets a close-to-complete song while she mostly remains in search of hers.

There’s a lot to like about “Out Here.” The actors are all skilled, the conception has an ambitious sense of artistic self-questioning and there’s some fun light comedy as it plays with its meta-theatricality. Director Chay Yew grasps and embraces the stripped-down, relaxed state of performance required to bond with an acknowledged audience and establish a constant state of becoming. There are moments when the show charms.

But there is also something lacking at the core. Even a show that desires to dissect or contemplate musicals even more than to be one, or to expose the form as a metaphor for life, has to provide enough substance to sing, or not sing, about. That might be narrative, a complex structure to puzzle together, character depth and discovery, or something else.

“Out Here” might well mean out in the sense of sexuality, and out of one’s comfort zone, and out in a world where you feel judged by people and can’t undo mistakes. But evocation of a theme based on a thin, overly ordinary tale of underdefined characters does not make for a complete artistic evening.