Get your ticket to this masquerade: “Stereophonic” thru Broadway in Chicago

Jack Garrett. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

Despite its brief stop here, the touring production of David Adjmi’s Tony-sweeping play “Stereophonic” is the first must-see show of the calendar year, if only because its likes are unlikely to pass this way again any time soon.

Though it has a fairly small cast, it is a piece that makes some gargantuan demands. In depicting the year-long travail of a Fleetwood Mac-ish band trying to cut their next record—which has to be bigger than the last, of course—five of them not only have to credibly sing and play an instrument. They also have to sing and play in an upstage recording booth, isolated from the audience and sometimes isolated from a song’s fuller context. (Making an album means re-recording lots of random little snippets, after all.) And, probably more than most plays that demand that ineffable “X” factor of its performers, they have to have the bearing of Seventies rock stars in the ascendant: each one firmly locked into the one thing they can do so well that, as a group, they can sell out stadiums; “on” even when they’re “off”.

It demands a lot of its audience, too, especially one that might walk in expecting a California-sunny depiction of artistic collaboration. Even with all its jolts of energy, it’s a very crepuscular play. There are no token obstacles or personal differences that are easily overcome, nor is there any sigh of relief at the end that says “All that was worth it.” The bandmates begin the play entering the studio all huggy and chatty and full of joie de vivre; a year later, they end it parting in an icy silence befitting any legendary rock-‘n’-roll feud. (Verité direction is by Daniel Aukin.)

Oh, yes, and that recording booth is for our purposes fully functional, so that’s a big ask for the sound department.

(And it made a big ask of Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire, to write credible pastiches that can reflect even in fragmentary form the studio dramatics, and also double as absolute bangers in their own right.)

For all that, this hypnotic hyper-realism burns with the suspense of a crucible. What will emerge from each temperamental staredown and square-off: something transubstantiating or just burnt char?

As the unnamed band, our musical alchemists—Claire DeJean, Emilie Kouatchou, Cornelius McMoyer, Denver Milord, and Christopher Mowod—certainly have the meatier roles, but Jack Barrett and Steven Lee Johnson, as the guys in the booth twiddling the knobs and faders, emerge as our secret protagonists. It must be quite the gift to be the ears of gods, but, as Barrett’s Grover says, it also means “deal[ing] with the consequences” when the gods demand honest feedback.

A lot of big asks being made, and for three-ish hours, too. (The touring production pares down the Broadway script to run within this time limit.) But time spent in a crucible can indeed yield unexpected rewards.

Stereophonic runs through Feb. 8th at 17 18 W. Monroe St. For tickets or more information, please visit either broadwayinchicago.com or stereophonicplay.com.

For more reviews on this or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.