The Brothers Inniss

If you’ve never seen Merrily We Roll Along, you’re not alone.  No one else has seen it either.  It should be required viewing for any artist in their mid-twenties as the story is a shining example of success turned tragedy.  The play opens in 1976 showing us the lives of three ex-best friends.  One is a Hollywood producer, one an award-winning playwright and one an alcoholic theater critic.  The plot unfolds through a backwards narrative.  After each scene, the chorus comes out and sings, "How did we get here?" and the clock rolls back a few years.  The final scene is three hopeful twenty-somethings standing on a roof in New York City in 1957 with big dreams and infinite possibilities.  But because you know where they end up, because you've known this since the opening scene of the show, that they're already torn apart, miserable, broken... you leave the theater wanting to punch a kitten in the face.  It’s awesome.

I've known Chris and Charles Inniss for about ten years.  We’ve worked together, shared the stage in various bands and have spent a few long nights with crappy beer and fun conversations about art, pop music and girls.  Last Thursday, I went to a reading of their new play, “Written in the Stars.”  The show is about a high school senior hoping to make it into dance school while trying to balance family issues, race issues, identity issues and a really attractive blond girlfriend... who has issues.  Like all relevant art, taking things we’ve seen and combining them in a new way, the show could be looked at as High School Musical meets Save the Last Dance.  And this was a reading, not a workshop or preview so there’s a lot of work to be done.  But the gems were there.  A few of the songs had decent grooves, a bit of the dialogue was easy and authentic, and it had a beginning, middle and end.  Also, did I mention the attractive blond?

The point of the reading was for the Innisses (Innisseez?  Innissi?) to see where they are in the process.  What lines worked?  What songs resonated with the audience?  What’s missing?  Every artist has in their heads a finished picture of their work.  The key is bring that ideal to life while staying objective about it.  Otherwise, you’ll hear the perfect rhythms of what the show can be while the audience has to suffer through the imperfect reality of what the show is.  Hopefully the reading helped Chris and Charles step out of their heads and see all the hard work that has yet to be done.  The baseline was boring as hell.  One of the melodies sounded like a drunken orangutan trying to yodel.  The first twenty minutes of the show should be whittled down to five minutes.

Oh, and did I mention that the show is really fucking good?

That’s the bonus of a reading like this – if it’s good, you’ll know immediately.  Sure, it needs work.  But it’s pre rough draft and the audience already loved it.  The show has a heartbeat – it’s bigger than Chris and Charles.  If they keep chipping away at it, tossing a song or two and bringing back a piece from the garbage, they’ll get it to the next level and the next and the next.  Potential.  I wasn’t just watching a work-in-progress, I was seeing the life equation we all participate in: Growth + Work = Success.  Note: this is a balanced equation, not a step 1: growth, step 2: work, step 3: success, step 4: death.  Success is loving the moment you’re in, the process, the journey.  That said, if the Brothers Inniss stay on their journey, people will pay them to see their shows eventually because their shows are going to get better and better.

Merrily asks the question over and over “How did we get here?”  The answer is simple: they were there from the beginning.  The three friends were always going to separate and hate each other.  Their failure was misunderstanding each others’ intent.  While they stood on the rooftop dreaming, each one was picturing a slightly different fantasy.  Luckily, the Brothers Inniss aren’t twenty flights up, they’re in the street pouring over their art, rewriting it, honing it.  They’ll make it.  They’ve already made it.  And in a few years, I’ll go to their shows on Broadway, smiling because they’re finally getting paid for it.