‘Falsettos’ Review: Family Hour

metroweekly.com:

Falsettos (★★★☆☆).Having provided DMV theatergoers — and the region’s working talent — an adventurous, LGBTQ-led arts and entertainment outpost in Howard County these many years, Rep Stage goes out with a show conveying the galvanizing point that everyone walks through this world both on their own and inextricably connected to whatever circle of love enfolds them.In Falsettos, that circle includes family and community.

And the larger point of connection applies not just to the characters who sing us through two trying years in the lives of Marvin, Whizzer, Trina, Jason, Mendel, Charlotte, and Cordelia.But the company of performers, each on their own landing somewhere between fine to fantastic with their portrayals, together create a compelling makeshift family of gay Jewish dad Marvin (Jake Loewenthal), his ex Trina (Sarah Corey), lover Whizzer (Davon Williams), son Jason (Grayden Goldman), and Trina’s new guy Mendel (Michael Perrie, Jr.).Where any falter, their castmates lift them up, as might the audience should any miss a note (or a few notes) of Finn’s pithy, sung-through score.Never missing a note, in her charismatic solo numbers, nor in the tricky characterization of a woman blindsided by her husband’s coming out, circa 1979, Corey’s Trina gets her story across with clarity and engaging humor.

Her smiling-through-disaster “I’m Breaking Down” is a masterpiece of well-choreographed comic tension.In Mendel, Marvin’s psychiatrist, Trina finds not only a new beau but a harmonic comedic complement, as Perrie’s jovial, if not entirely ethical, doc pairs swimmingly with Corey.

Perrie’s timing, at times, steals scenes, abetted by Finn and Lapine’s script, which lets Mendel off the hook for swooping in on his patient’s.