Dan Myers
Amber Nicole Dilger plays Sara Jane, a military wife struggling with loss.
In Arlington, the new musical making its Midwestern debut at Lakeside Street Coffee House, a delightful and sometimes flighty young woman invites you into her living room for a chat. Since her military husband has been stationed in the Middle East for the last three months, she seems almost desperate to have someone to talk to, and the audience fills that role.
Over the course of the Music Theater of Madison show, which runs through May 7, Sarah Jane (played beautifully by Amber Nicole Dilger) sings about her father and brother, who both served in the military; her shallow and occasionally mean mother, who is now obsessed with plastic surgery; her courtship with her husband, Jerry, and the tedium of waiting for him to come home.
True to the show’s title, she also sings about a trip to Arlington National Cemetery with her family when she was young. The images of the graves, the sentries who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the tears her father shed made an indelible impression. They reaffirm Sarah Jane’s place in the world — as someone intimately connected to the duty, honor, chaos, loss and atrocity of war.
With book and lyrics by Victor Lodato and music by Polly Pen, Arlington is vastly different from the Broadway musicals that currently fill theaters with intricate choreography, huge sets and hummable refrains. It’s more appropriate to call it an “intimate musical conversation” instead. The score is challenging, and handled expertly by both Dilger and pianist Mark Wurzelbacher. As a result, the moments when Sarah Jane is speaking and singing merge together seamlessly. Dilger’s strong, clear soprano sails easily through the phrases, highlighting her character’s naturally cheerful disposition and youthful naiveté.
Music Theater of Madison has been experimenting with presenting shows in nontraditional venues this year, and this production is a perfect example of how well that can work. Setting Arlington in a coffee shop full of homey décor and comfortable couches with the audience on all sides, it’s as if we’re all attending a casual dinner party for a friend. The setting matches the immersive storytelling style, removing barriers between the performer and the audience. Director Catie O’Donnell has Sarah Jane moving around the entire space, so there’s not a bad seat in the house.
With all these production elements firmly in place, unfortunately it’s Arlington’s script that falters. Sarah Jane is initially likeable and sympathetic, but ultimately too simplistic to provide a satisfying journey for audience members. Her “happy homemaker” persona, which embraces being the weak one in her relationship with her husband and fails to understand why women would want to be in the military, would be hard to swallow in a character in the 1950s, let alone from a modern woman. And her realization that there are many innocent victims in a war — including women and children that her own husband has killed and documented with his iPhone — feels facile.
Still, many of the complicated emotions of a conflicted military wife do come through in performance, and that, in conjunction with Dilger and Wurzelbacher’s masterful musical talents, makes the evening worthwhile. The complexities that military families face, in any era, should also spark some good post-show conversations.
