It’s easy to sit in a dark theater, listen to a tuneful new musical, and thoroughly enjoy yourself. All it takes is pleasant piano, decent voices, and interesting visual elements. Yet upon leaving, you can still turn to your companion and say, “Wow, that show has some issues.”
Such is the case with Unknown Soldier, a flawed but charming intergenerational musical that traces the lives of two women over 100 years. Composer and co-lyricist Michael Friedman died of complications from HIV/AIDS in 2017, less than two years after Unknown Soldier’s premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival. A New York off-Broadway premiere was cut short by the pandemic in 2020. Now Arena Stage is hosting the show following a fresh round of tinkering from the play’s remaining creators.
Unknown Soldier features a book by Daniel Goldstein, who also jointly wrote the lyrics with Friedman. Broadway vet Trip Cullman directs. More male-presenting names are listed as the orchestrator, music director, and choreographer, as well as the costume, set, lighting, sound and hair/makeup/wig designers. It’s astounding that Arena Stage is comfortable mounting a musical that’s almost completely helmed by men. Disappointing on principle, but also because there is likely a correlation between this stage full of underdeveloped women characters and the roomful of men who invented them.
Among my questions for the Unknown Soldier squadron: What 41-year-old Manhattan doctor never asks her 100-year-old grandmother about their family history and suddenly becomes a genealogy detective once granny’s in the grave? And why is her male romantic interest—a nerdy Cornell librarian who assists the ob-gyn in her search—the most relatable character in this women-focused musical?
Beyond the gender-driven issues, the central problem plaguing Unknown Soldier is that its most intriguing elements seem to hail from completely different shows, dovetailed together with Friedman’s lovely piano-driven chamber music and a sledgehammer.
To be clear for D.C. audiences, Unknown Soldier has no connection to Arlington National Cemetery. Instead, the title refers to a fictional amnesiac in uniform found wandering Grand Central Station during World War I. The story follows three different time-and-place continuums: one in 1918, one in 1973, and another in 2003.
The mystery of his identity—both to those wondering in 1918, and to Ellen (Lora Lee Gayer), who, in 2003, finds an old magazine clipping with a photo of her grandmother and the soldier—drives the show. Astute audience members will likely solve the mystery faster than Ellen and her librarian friend (an endearing Adam Chanler–Berat), who connect first by email, then instant messenger, then landlines, and finally meet in person.
“How about you get out of that dusty basement and come get nerdy with me?” MisterDarcy98 types to Ellen on AIM, because the 2003 track of the show is trying to be an upstate New York version of You’ve Got Mail, replete with jokes about Ithaca being gorgeous.
Scenes set between 1918 and 1920 are the strongest, and not coincidentally, the most surprising. Kerstin Anderson, channeling a younger version of Glynis Johns (the suffragette mother in Mary Poppins) plays Lucy Lemay, Ellen’s eventual grandmother. Lucy’s given little backstory, but most likely she’s upper class, judging by her spiffy hats, nice dresses, and that she hails from Troy, the Albany suburb that stands in for Manhattan on HBO’s The Gilded Age.
One standout musical number finds Lucy preparing breakfast for her soldier, methodically setting plates and making toast until the deconstructed waltz completely unravels and she breaks down in tears. A few songs later, Nehal Joshi, playing a sanitarium doctor, leads the ensemble in a lively dance number about the unknown solder, “our favorite shell-shocked amnesiac celebrity.” A musical about amnesia starring a dancing psychiatrist and his asylum nurses? Sign me up!
But Unknown Soldier is not that musical. Instead, “The Memory Song” is a lively distraction from the strained romantic comedy and the slightly sentimental Great War plotline. A third time-place continuum depicts young Ellen (a spunky Riglee Ruth Bryson) at age 10, living with her grumpy grandma Lucy (Judy Kuhn) in 1973. I kept waiting for Kuhn’s character to become a scene-stealer like the grandma experiencing dementia in Billy Elliot, but the Tony nominee’s talents are largely wasted here.
All three tracks play out on the same white minimalist set, marked by seven white tables, piles of file boxes concealing props and hanging lamps that evoke a clinical atmosphere. It’s cool, but not nearly as effective as the similar tableau employed in Here There Are Blueberries, a superior wartime photography mystery staged at Shakespeare Theatre last year.
Ellen’s longing to complete a narrative from the past is, to a certain extent, a universal desire. That sentiment also likely drove Arena Stage’s decision to stage the musical. Championing Unknown Soldier is a valiant cause. But Friedman’s output was prolific—his noteworthy musicals include Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Beautiful City—but the work I’d most like to see now is his “State of the Union” songbook, written for the presidential election of 2016 and sadly just as relevant today.
Without Friedman alive to revise it, Unknown Soldier may never become more than snippets and memories that paint an incomplete picture. Like Ellen’s familial quest, the search is worthwhile, but the end result not entirely satisfying.
Unknown Soldier, music by Michael Friedman, book by Daniel Goldstein, lyrics by Friedman and Goldstein, and directed by Trip Cullman, runs through May 5 at Arena Stage. arenastage.org. $56–$95.
