
The musical '42 Balloons' at Chicago Shakes is a producer's bet on the unknown
The 63-year-old Broadway producer Kevin McCollum is of the age when one starts to wonder about one's legacy. Then again, producers, an optimistic crew by trade and existential necessity, always have to be looking forward. No producer wants to be tagged a nostalgist. And so, at a bar on Navy Pier, one can see McCollum's famously restless mind flit back and forth between past and present, defining his oeuvre and shying away from the task.
McCollum's past includes 'Rent,' 'Avenue Q,' 'In the Heights' and 'Six,' to name the biggest titles upon which his reputation and financial well-being most fully rest. In the immediate future, there is '42 Balloons.'
That's the title of McCollum's latest tryout at The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the same theater that launched both 'The Notebook' (with a short Broadway run that still stings the producer) and 'Six,' a blockbuster hit despite having the most of Broadway musical budgets.
'42 Balloons' is a musical about the quixotic Vietnam veteran known as 'Lawnchair Larry' Walters, who took to the air in 1982 above Southern California while seated in a lawn chair lifted by more than 40 helium-filled weather balloons. Walters reached as high as 16,000 feet, which meant he entered the sights of commercial pilots in airspace controlled by the Los Angeles International Airport. He came down by popping his balloons with a BB gun, a metaphor waiting to happen.
The Federal Aviation Administration did not appreciate the stunt, eventually charging Walters with violating controlled airspace, operating a non-airworthy craft (surely debatable, given the success of the flight) and flying without a balloon license. But Walters' lawnchair, replete with its jerry-rigged frame and attached water bottles, is still on display at the National Air and Space Museum as part of an exhibit aptly titled 'We All Fly.'
The core of Walters' audacious story has long interested others. In 2009, Steppenwolf Theatre Company produced Bridget Carpenter's 'Up,' a moving play that imagined the life of a man named Walter, who once had been famous for attaching balloons to his lawn chair but then spends his days fiddling in his basement trying to re-create his moment of fame. The Disney movie 'Up' from the same year also had some similarities, and Walters has been the subject of podcasts and articles aplenty. But the possibilities for a musical from the story are pretty self-evident, given the long Broadway history of flight as a metaphor for escape, a willingness to take risks and the ever-popular craving for self-actualization.
All of that pretty much describes 'Defying Gravity' from 'Wicked,' one of the most popular Broadway numbers of the 21st century: 'So if you care to find me,' Elphaba sings, 'Look to the western sky.'
A broomstick? 42 balloons? The pneumatic ascent to the 'Heaviside Layer' in 'Cats'? All very much a shared metaphor.
Those shows, though, were the work of a highly experienced writing and composing team. That's far from the case with '42 Balloons.'
To say that the show's sole writer and composer, the 32-year-old Jack Godfrey, is a newcomer to the musical theater is to understate. '42 Balloons' is not only his first musical but his first foray into the professional theater. His director and dramaturg, Ellie Coote, is a childhood friend with whose brother Godfrey played rugby. Until recently he had a day job in London teaching English as a foreign language.
Born and raised in Oxford, England, the earnest, modest and likable Godfrey says he came from a family that did not have any connections to the theater, beyond attending tours of 'Les Miserables.' But his dad wrote him silly songs as a kid and he picked up that mantle. 'I wanted to write songs for Beyoncé,' he says.
Godfrey studied religion at Durham University as an undergraduate, with a year abroad at Boston College, but eventually found his way to a musical theater course at the University of London and remained, having decided to pursue a career as a writer of musicals. His only other real experience prior to '42 Balloons' has been penning music for his brother's short movie and writing a musical history of the Methodist Church ('kind of an 18th century 'Book of Mormon,' he says, 'only much less funny').
But then, some eight years ago, he came across the story of Walters on the internet and he says, 'I could relate to a story about a man who had a dream.' He started meeting with Coote and putting together a score.
By happenstance, Coote knew a member of the creative team behind 'Six' and Godfrey played his score for him. That led to a meeting with Andy and Wendy Barnes, a British married couple who became late-in-life developers of new British musicals and are well respected for having discovered 'Six.' That led to a few Monday night workshops in London at the Vaudeville Theatre, staged on top of the set for 'Six,' which led to a call to McCollum, which led to a first full staging of '42 Balloons' at the Lowry Theatre in Manchester, which has now led to the show's North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
'We love working on new musicals here,' says Edward Hall, Chicago Shakespeare's relatively new artistic director, as he watches rehearsals. His company has already put a lot of development work in the title alongside McCollum, whom Hall has known for years.
Should '42 Balloons' follow a similar trajectory to those 'Six' queens, it's fair to say that everyone involved would be delighted.
After the run at the Lowry, Godfrey got a call from McCollum. At Navy Pier, he showed he can do a pretty good impression of the producer's voice: 'Jack, it's Kevin McCollum. I want to take your show to America. How does that sound?'
Ergo, '42 Balloons' has its official liftoff on Navy Pier on Tuesday night.
'I really love this country,' Godfrey says unprompted and rather touchingly after recounting the show's brief history alongside his own. 'I have this fascination with American culture and I picked an American story because I wanted to write sort of from an outsider's perspective, very much like Bill Bryson has written about Britain. I really want this show to be my love letter to America.'
Fascinatingly, one of Godfrey's lyrics points out that although Walters had a camera attached to his chair, he never took one photograph; such was the difference between 1982 and today.
'42 Balloons' appears very much in the McCollum aesthetic. Its physical scale and cast size is relatively modest (like 'Six'), a sampling of Godfrey's songs suggest a melodic, soft-core romanticism (like 'Rent's' Jonathan Larson), the show aims to have a certain insouciance (like 'Avenue Q') and the central character is a misfit like Man in Chair from 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' another McCollum title. Such comparisons are, of course, wildly premature and may prove ridiculous.
Or apt.
Such aspirations are why producers take risks on the unproven. '42 Balloons,' McCullom says, 'is about what musicals are so often about: 'How do you fly against all odds?''
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Chicago Tribune
10 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Review: The Broadway-bound '42 Balloons' is a musical lifted by songs you've heard before
Had the young British writer Jack Godfrey made up the plot of '42 Balloons,' his new musical with Broadway aspirations now in its North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, he'd have been obliged to justify its eccentricity. But a California man who came to be known as 'Lawnchair Larry' Walters really did attach 42 helium-filled weather balloons to a Sears lawn chair, take a seat and leave terra firma in 1982, reaching a whopping height of 16,000 feet during his 45-minute flight before popping some balloons with a pellet gun and floating back down to Earth. The introverted Walter was not some TikTok influencer (he took no pictures and did not inhabit any such gestalt), but an eccentric man who simply wanted to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a pilot. For those who have not seen other material influenced by Walters' flight (the movie 'Up' being just one example), the veracity of the story gets pointed out at the top of '42 Balloons' by an eight-person ensemble, a self-aware Greek chorus that knows it is in a musical. 'This actually happened, you can look it up after the show,' they sing. 'And you can tell your friends about it and they can say, 'That's pretty crazy, why did you go and see a musical about balloons and what makes a man try to fly in a lawn chair?'' That's a good question on many levels, especially since Walters (played by Charlie McCullagh) persuaded his wife, Carol (Evelyn Hoskins, in a dominant performance), and his best pal, Ron (Akron Watson), to fund and back his quixotic quest, despite its obvious risks to life and limb. But it's also a clever bit of self-protection from the exceedingly smart Godfrey, a newcomer who has written an enjoyable and engaging new musical that strives to see Walters as an everyman with a weird dream — not so different, of course, from the dreams people describe in Tony Award acceptance speeches. His fast-moving, sung-through show (Godfrey penned the whole shooting match) is a quizzical, chirpy, mid-sized musical written for a cast of 12, with an undeniably charming and very British insouciance. American eccentrics like Walters long have provided material for satirists across the pond. But the difference between '42 Balloons' and, say, 'Jerry Springer — The Opera' is that this one has an emotional openness at its core. Godfrey walks a careful line between making musical hay with the strangeness of Walters' 'Candide'-like quest and admiring the guy's chutzpah and his determination to find his grail, as they say in 'Spamalot.' Many of his lyrics are written in narrative rather than dramatic form, allowing his characters to comment on their own actions and motivations ('Suddenly Larry felt a flash in his mind,' Larry sings at one point, and Carol warbles 'Carol didn't really expect this'). But then Godfrey also knows how to write sharp, funny lyrics. When Carol's mom, Margaret (the caustic Lisa Howard) makes her first entrance, her song starts with, 'When your daughter marries a loser …' It's funny, because it reflects back exactly what the audience is thinking. The score is, well, strangely familiar. There's a number that recalls 'Light My Candle' from 'Rent.' Another that sounds like 'Everything's Alright' from 'Jesus Christ Superstar.' A third shot me right into the middle of Justin Paul and Benj Pasek's 'Dear Evan Hansen.' A fourth felt like 'Come From Away.' And a fifth catchy hook, penned for Carol and beautifully sung by the fabulous Hoskins, kept me awake half the night trying to remember in which show I had heard that particular musical phrase before. You can hear the strong influence of Tim Minchin, who wrote the score for 'Matilda,' as well as other English composers from John Barry to Andrew Lloyd Webber to Willy Russell to Elton John to the Australian songwriter John Farrar, who wrote 'Xanadu,' another show you keep hearing. There's a 'Hamilton'-like rap and, unsurprisingly, some harmonics not so different from 'Six.' At other moments in the orchestrations, you feel like you are listening to ABBA or Electric Light Orchestra or 10cc or the show 'Rock of Ages.' I recount all that not necessarily as pejorative or to say that '42 Balloons' is like a musical Wikipedia (although, come to think of it …). Broadway musicals are an incremental art form and shows quote other scores all the time, and that above list is long enough to suggest intentionality and provide contrasts. But it is especially noticeable here and is part of what makes Godfrey's score Godfrey's score. There's a baked-in familiarity to everything you hear and, while purists will likely demur, I can see regular audiences latching onto its retro, gently satirical comforts. It's easy on the ears and it also knows that it's easy on the ears and has fun making fun of the fact that it's easy on the ears. The musical '42 Balloons' at Chicago Shakes is a producer's bet on the unknownBy Act 2, I'd decided this was the most jukebox-like musical that was not a jukebox musical I had ever heard. That might well be its secret to success: giving an audience original songs that they will feel like they have enjoyed before. That's actually far from easy to pull off and, despite the undeniably derivative nature of this theatrical experience, I find myself wanting to go back and hear it again. Hoskins, a powerhouse British talent, takes the most advantage of the score's many opportunities. A performer with integrity, McCullagh is laudably committed to honoring his troubled and introverted character, but he still needs to fully find his way to the emotional center of the show. That's the show's biggest issue right now. There's other work to be done, beginning with a song or two that quote absolutely nothing, although this piece already has been staged in Manchester in the U.K. and it's performed at a very capable level under director Ellie Coote, another talented newcomer. There's a hole in Act 1 where Larry needs a song to better explain, like, why he wants to fly in a lawnchair. The Act 2 swirl where post-flight Larry becomes a media curiosity feels underdeveloped. And the show still has to figure out how to logically negotiate both the sadness of the end of this story and its inspirational properties, as musicals always demand. It's all rushed right now. And, frankly, if it says '42 Balloons' on the marquee, they need to be in the show, not the lobby; the lawnchair alone looks mighty lonely. Godfrey introduces an original character to this story, called The Kid, a bystander who finds himself inspired in his own life by Walter's acts. That's a great device and worth further developing, especially since the fine young performer, Minju Michelle Lee, makes you feel what you need to feel. Walking out the door, I found myself thinking about the ubiquitousness of casual American cruelty, present in the 1980s and, of course, today. Plenty of folks right now would like to ascend into the air and get away. If Godfrey can have fun tap into that, Walters will seem like the most logical person in the country. Review: '42 Balloons' (3 stars) When: Through June 29 Where: The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes Tickets: $71-$132 at 312-595-5600 and
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