THE HANGOVER REPORT – Lightning Rod Special’s audaciously improbable musical THE APPOINTMENT returns Off-Broadway

The company of Lighting Rod Special’s “The Appointment” at the WP Theater (photo by Michael Kushner).

One of the most improbable theatrical creations of the past five years or so must surely be Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment, a musical which contextualizes and contemplates what it means to have an abortion — both to pregnant women seeking to have the controversial procedure performed, as well as, audaciously, their unborn fetuses. If you missed its all-too-brief 2019 run at New York Theatre Workshop (as part of its Next Door series), now’s your chance to catch the show, which has returned Off-Broadway at the WP Theater on the Upper West Side for a strictly limited engagement.

I recall being both challenged and disoriented when I first saw the piece four years ago. Upon revisiting the work – especially now that Roe vs. Wade has been overturned – I can firmly attest that its uncanny ability to destabilize remains defiantly intact. By juxtaposing hyper-realistic scenes at the abirtion clinic with wildly untethered scenes of singing and dancing fetuses (!), the musical – which features a book by Alice Yorke, Eva Steinmetz, Scott R. Sheppard, and Alex Bechtel (Yorke and Sheppard also appear in the show) and a score by Sheppard – the musical achieves a kind of profound dimension that fails to register through mere intellectual and moral discourse.

The cast of seven remains an utter delight, even as they incite discomfort and prod audiences to come literally face to face with the realities of the procedure. Their ability to toggle so completely between the somber clinic-set segments and the furiously giddy and fantastical fetus scenes remains astonishing, and they perform show’s absurd satirical musical numbers so imperfectly that they’re really quite perfect. As for Ms. Steinmetz’s production, it remains a riot until it’s starkly not.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

THE APPOINTMENT
Off-Broadway, Musical
Lighting Rod Special at WP Theater
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through February 4

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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