Director Tom Milewski seemed apologetic about the production–in conversation and his pre-show speech he stressed that Red Ink, the new musical at Theatre Off Jackson, was still in the workshop stage. But the opening-night audience was hooked and cheering by the end of the first scene, when a stiff, bloody accountant was dragged offstage, operatically singing that he wouldn’t be the last corpse of the fiscal quarter. Red Ink is a workshop production and it needs work–but not much.
The singing tale of murderous revenge at the accounting firm of Irving & Irving is comic, violent, and at times genuinely sad. Playwright Tim Sanders treats us to fratricide, niece-wooing, and other Jacobean excesses, but the play’s deepest tragedies are more mundane: the slavishly devoted but second-string accountant who has no identity beyond the office, or the sad love triangle between a sexually tormented manager, his Christian girlfriend (and receptionist), and his ex-boyfriend (and employee). The backdrop of these tiny, real tragedies makes the sweeping blood feud more ridiculous and fun.
Populating the musical with accountants is more than a chance to poke fun at pencil pushers, it’s an opportunity to put bloody, Jacobean-style drama in its proper modern context: among the cubicles of power–occupied by the corrupt, the frustrated, and the vengeful.
The grand tragedy is appropriately over the top, but doesn’t always seem at home in its office setting. The accountants spit out strings of financial jargon without conviction and are jumpy and emotional, suggesting a sinister backstory we don’t fully understand. Red Ink is too bloody and original to be just another office comedy; more ethnographic detail about the world of Irving & Irving would enrich the story.
A few fantastic elements (a singing water cooler, a pair of angry scissors) leaven Red Ink‘s heavy atmosphere, but the production still feels too long. Almost every song has redundant verses that sap a little of our limited attention without pushing the plot or filling out the characters. But when it moves, it’s cracking: dark, jazzy melodies, sharp humor, and a compelling multiple-murder mystery. The ensemble is a pleasure to watch, tackling the big story and songs with vigor. Jeremy Delamarter’s music works well with the text, veering between moody, dissonant rumbling and overwrought, big-musical goofiness.
Red Ink is a little more than a workshop and a little less than a full production. At two and a half hours, it needs editing and more active staging (the characters do a lot of standing and emoting) but Milewski needn’t have apologized. He has wrangled a complicated original musical into a presentable, entertaining production and shown us that its potential demands a remount.
