Joe Iconis and Family
54 Below
Through August 23

Joe Iconis starts the show seated alone at the piano, singing an aspirational song, suggesting that what we need to be is: “A nation of unemployment insurance and contraceptives. / Literate children and empathetic leaders, / Gratification, and funding for the arts.”

Then, lest we think he’s taking himself too seriously or even acting too ”‘woke,” he adds, “and weed.” He then continues, “We need a nation of cars that move fast and justice that moves faster. / Kind hearted landlords, tolerant doctors. / Sex without shame and love without hate … and weed.”

Mr. Iconis looks like an old-school songwriter of the early 1960s, with short hair, Elvis Costello-style glasses, and a conservative suit and tie. His music doesn’t entirely contradict all of that, but he is one of the more forward-thinking composers working in musical theater at this moment.  

That first number, “Wavesong,” builds up to a musical and dramatic high point wherein a choir comes in behind him, and the collective ensemble chants repetitively, “It gets better and worse and better and worse.” The implication is that these moments in our political history — as well as our personal lives — go up and down, rather like waves upon the shore. Soon, the choir is making semi-verbal noises to simulate the motion of waves: “Crash / whoosh / crash / whoosh.” It ends with an affirmative line, “Be brave and sail toward the next wave.”

At 43, Mr. Iconis is known largely for two things: the show “Be More Chill,” which ran for six months on Broadway in 2019, and his series of songwriter-driven appearances at supper clubs like Joe’s Pub and 54 Below. These cabaret performances, one-man shows with casts of dozens, are so meticulously organized and arranged that they might as well be full-scale theatrical works.  

On Thursday night, there were 26 singers named in the cast list, who sang individual solos and also functioned as a chorus, singing choral arrangements that were as meticulously orchestrated as any Broadway production.  

Mr. Iconis is the living heir to a legacy that, over the last 60 years at least, has been handed down from Stephen Sondheim to John Kander and Fred Ebb, and then to Richard Maltby and David Shire, and then to Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, and now to Broadway creators such as Jason Robert Brown, Zina Goldrich, Marcy Heisler, and Mr. Iconis.

A few songs in, the composer announces, “This is the first time I’ve ever played a run here with the new official title of the first ever ‘54 Below Artist in Residence.’” He continues, “I keep talking about it. It’s like a real job.” Then he adds, “And so my mom was so excited about this. ‘Oh cool, so you go to the office every day?’ And I was like, ‘Nope, I don’t do that.’ ‘And you have a boss you report to?’ ‘Nope, I don’t have those either.’ And she was all, ‘No, this is not a real job.’” 

Many of the songs are musical monologues expressing the inner lives of oddballs and misfits who are trying to fit in with the larger society. “Andy’s Song,” performed by Jeremy Morse, is a cheerful, bouncy, old-time show tune in 2/4; two of the singers double on kazoo to provide proper backing. It’s a character-establishing song from a proposed musical version of the 2005 Judd Apatow comedy “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” And, to make it even more old fashioned, Mr. Morse surprises us at the coda by lunging into a tap-dance break, asking, “Could a non-virgin do that?”

“Andy” in “Andy’s Song” at least is so naive that he isn’t aware of how pathetic — and simultaneously sympathetic — he is. Alas, the heroine of “Dodge Ball,” Morgan Siobhan Green, undergoes a journey of unfortunate discovery as she gradually concludes that nobody likes her when neither side picks her for a dodge ball team. In “Party Hat,” Will Roland gives us a chronic loner who tries to cheer himself up by putting said headwear on his cat — expressively embodied by Danielle Gimbal — and a dress on himself.   “Everybody’s at the Bar (Without Me)” is a bleak admission of involuntary solitude belied by a cheerful, Motown-like melody, with the rest of the singers playing the crowd at the venue’s actual bar.

The veteran Lorinda Lisitza delivers a powerful reading of “Ammonia,” described by its author as a “beast of a song.” It is an extended soliloquy portraying a middle-aged housewife, underappreciated by her family, who finds solace in tidying her house, but then the song suggests that she might be contemplating suicide by imbibing the titular cleaning fluid.

“Wavesong” and “Song of the Brown Buffalo,” sung by John El-Jor, are from Mr. Iconis’s most recent work, “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical,” which just played at the Signature Theatre at Arlington, just outside of D.C. If Mr. Iconis was trying to whet my appetite to see and hear that two-act musical in its entirety, he succeeded.

“Joe Iconis & Family” is at once less and more than traditional musical theater — there were so many singers that there wasn’t room for them all on the stage, along with Mr. Iconis on the familiar grand piano, guitarists Max Wagner and Eric William Morris, bassist Ian Kagey, drummer Brent Stranathan, and Jaz Koft on additional keyboards. The two-dozen singers overflowed the stage and surrounded the audience; this is truly my kind of immersive theatrical experience.