'Octet'

On 5 June, I posted a performance report on Rick On Theater on a revival of Sam Shepard’s 1977 play Curse of the Starving Class.  At the very beginning of the report, I confessed that I was not a Shepard fan but that my bottom line for the Signature Theatre Company production was, “I didn’t hate it.”  Essentially, that means that I don’t really like Shepard’s work, but I managed to find some pleasure in this particular mounting.

Now I’m faced with a sort of reverse experience.  Right after I saw Curse, I saw Dave Malloy’s Octet, also at STC.  It’s a one-act, a capella musical (an hour and 40 minutes) about Internet addiction, and its form and subject—all the characters are computer geeks, ages ranging from early 20’s to late 40’s and include a multitude of ethnicities and backgrounds—was foreign to me.  (I use a computer, of course—I have a blog, so I must, right?—but to me, it’s a lot like driving a car: I know how to turn it on, gas it up, and make it go, but I have little idea how it actually works or what all the doohickeys and thingamabobs are called.) 

But I’m in a quandary—I liked what I saw but at the same time, I don’t really know what Malloy is trying to tell me.  So, now I have to compose a report on a play I enjoyed but which I didn’t really get.  Now, I’ve disclosed a number of times that sometimes when I don’t fully comprehend a play after I’ve seen it, writing about it clarifies the experience for me.  Let’s hope that this report will get me closer to understanding Octet while I work through the write-up. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a new musical.  (The last one, according to my records, was School of Rock in 2016, report posted on 22 September.)  Furthermore, though I’ve heard of several a capella musicals—In Transit (Off-Broadway, 2010; Broadway, 2016) and Perfect Harmony (Off-Off-Broadway, 2008; Off-Broadway, 2010)—I’ve never seen one so I didn’t know what to expect.

Signature’s production of Octet—for which Malloy, 43, is librettist, composer, and lyricist—is the play’s world première and is the first production in Malloy’s Residency 5 at Signature, which will include three productions over the course of five years.  (Malloy is the first musical-theater writer in STC’s residency program and Octet is the first musical Signature’s produced.)  According to the New York Times’ Alexis Soloski, Octet had its origins, at least in Malloy’s mind, in the social media reaction to the attempt of the producers of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, the composer-lyricist-playwright’s only Broadway foray, to replace actor Okieriete Onaodowan with Broadway vet Mandy Patinkin in 2017.  The cyber sphere chatterers forced LCT to close the show precipitously. 

“Mr. Malloy had always had his normal share of online addictions,” wrote Soloski, “mostly games, but that week he found himself compulsively refreshing his Twitter page, looking at what teenagers and strangers and robots had written . . . .”  That experience became the seed of Octet and the kernel of the song “Refresh.”

Soloski reported that Malloy wrote an a capella musical for several reasons:

Because instruments are another technology, because why would a band crash a 12-step meeting, because Mr. Malloy believes in writing the thing that scares you the most . . . .

The playwright says he took this last idea from dramatist, director, and filmmaker Young Jean Lee (writer and director of Straight White Men, 2018 Broadway play, and Here Come the Girls, 2013 short film), who begins writing a play by asking herself, “What’s the last play in the world you would ever want to write?”  “An a cappella musical about internet addiction fits that bill” for Malloy, asserted Soloski. 

In a note from Malloy inserted in the program, the playwright states, “Inspiration for Octet came from several books, plays, films, pieces of music, and games about technology, mental health, spirfituality, and the intersections of the three.”  He then provides a long list  of material on which he’s drawn from books like Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to plays such as Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information and Stephen Sondheim’s Company to books on Tarot, podcasts, computer games, films such as Altered States and Blade Runner to music like Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives and Toby Twining’s Chrysalid Requiem.  (The list is long, and only partial, Malloy says.)

Scuttlebutt in the New York theater world alleges that Malloy wrote the play in six months starting last November and completed it in one draft, without multiple versions or revisions.  Signature’s practice is to engage their resident writers in the rehearsal process as much as the writer wants, and Malloy, working with the cast, made changes to the script right through previews.  In other words, if the talk is accurate, Octet’s rehearsals and previews were the play’s workshop (which is the main reason I prefer to see plays after the official opening!). 

Dave Malloy (b. 1976) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in the suburb of Lakewood and he credits his four years at Lakewood High School with providing him with his musical education.  Both parents played instruments—dad the sax and mom the piano—and the house was always filled with music and books.  At Ohio University, Malloy majored in music composition.  His theater career started in San Francisco in 2000 where he designed soundscapes for experimental productions in the Bay Area.  He was soon recruited to write songs for plays, graduating to complete scores for musicals. 

A 2008 commission from the Shotgun Players in Berkeley to write a musical with a company called Banana Bag & Bodice, a troupe formed in San Francisco but which decamped for Brooklyn, New York, in 2000, resulted in Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage, which was a hit in the Bay Area and came to New York in 2009, bringing Malloy with it.  Following Beowulf, Malloy co-created and performed in Three Pianos, a “wacky assault on” Schubert’s Winterreise song cycle, in the words of the New York Times’ Neil Genzlinger, for Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 2010.  The performance piece won a special Obie Award and had runs at New York Theatre Workshop and American Repertory Theatre at Harvard.  Eventually, this all led to The Great Comet in 2012, which premièred Off-Broadway in 2013 and moved to Broadway in 2016 where it received a Best Musical Tony nomination.

(When a theatergoer wondered if Octet might move to Broadway like Great Comet, one Malloy follower replied that “after Comet’s fallout, Dave has expressed bluntly that he plans to never have a show on Broadway again.”  I have no idea if this is accurate, but it’s understandable.)

After writing The Great Comet, Malloy composed Ghost Quartet (2014), a song cycle that premièred in Brooklyn under the direction of Annie Tippe (director of Octet) and then played at ART, in San Francisco, and at the Edinburgh Fringe, and Preludes (2015), a musical fantasy set in the mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff, that débuted Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater, the company’s experimental theater space atop the Vivian Beaumont.  According to Playbill, Malloy’s next project is a musical based on Moby Dick to be called Moby Dick, Part III: The Ballad of Pip, which will première at Harvard’s ART in December and January 2020.

The première of Octet started previews in the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, Signature’s variable-space black box house, at the Pershing Square Signature Center on Theatre Row on 30 April 2019; it opened on 19 May and Diana, my Signature subscription partner, and I saw it at the 7:30 performance on Friday evening, 24 May.  The production’s closing was extended twice from 9 and 16 June to 30 June at present.

Malloy’s play features a score reminiscent of an a cappella chamber choir and a book inspired by Internet comment boards and chat rooms, scientific debates, religious texts, Sufi poetry, and Tarot cards, among other diverse topics.

The playwright’s idea is to look at the notion that computer technology has moved so fast that humans can’t keep up.  Consequently, we’re suffering from an addiction and don’t see how to use the ’Net for our real benefit—as opposed to a momentary gratification.  Octet is meant to explore the addiction and nihilism generated by 21st-century technology and touches on isolation and loneliness among the ’Net-obsessed.  The characters are each addicted to different computer and cell-phone apps and sites: Instagram and social media; texting; Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and other games; Reddit; 4chan; QAnon.  (I don’t even know what all of these are!  I confess to fuddy-duddiness.)

                                                         

There’s no real plot in Octet, in the sense of a cohesive narrative that proceeds from scene to scene with each one leading logically and causally to the next.  It’s a string-of-beads structure, with each of the eight characters (an octet, you notice) telling his or her story in song independently of the others.   (In a way, Octet is Kennedy’s Children meets Choir Boy.)  The play’s set up like an AA or NA meeting, except that all the attendees sing their “shares.”

Even the Linney’s made to look like the meeting room in a church basement and we enter down a hallway past bulletin boards with fliers and posters and one of those black fabric letter boards listing the events scheduled for the room, including an entry for “Friends of Saul” (the name of the group) at 7:30 (curtain time for the performance).  We enter the drab meeting room, which we have to cross to get to the seats, with a coffee table and more notices and posters on the wall, and the ubiquitous wooden hymn board.  It’s all sort of hyperreal and I actually thought it was kind of neat.  (The set is designed by Amy Rubin and Brittany Vasta.  As ROTters may know, I’m a sucker for that sort of theatricality.) 

Among the “Friends of Saul,” frantic and hyper Jessica (Margo Seibert) deals with the aftermath of a “white woman goes crazy video” that went viral, craving a reset in a safe place away from the shaming.  Henry (Alex Gibson), a gaming addict who obsessively plays the candy games like Candy Crush on his smart phone.  He’s outwardly lighthearted, but hides some demons.  Computer-whiz Toby (Justin Gregory Lopez) is a misanthropic paranoid who haunts conspiracy-theory sites  and argues with the Internet trolls who inhabit that cyber world.  Karly (Kim Blanck), an actress in her 20’s, struggles with on-line hook-ups but is frustrated by men’s inappropriate attention to her.  She’s anxious that porn sites are full of men who hate women and how this can easily lead to violence.

Ed (Adam Bashian), insecure and socially isolated, has problems with on-line dating apps, too, as well as Internet porn.  Velma (Kuhoo Verma), the group’s newcomer, sings of the benefits of Internet connection and how she found love in cyber space—but remains lonely in real life.  Group leader Paula (Starr Busby), who reaches out to Velma to smooth her entry into the group, is trying to cut back on her technology use at home, but her husband brings their cell phones into the bedroom, straining the marital relationship.  Marvin (J. D. Mollison) a neurochemist, has found that religious and spiritual miracles can occur virtually.  He and his fellow scientists experienced the appearance of God, who manifested to them as an 11-year-old girl dressed as a mermaid.

“Saul,” by the way, is the group’s founder—but we never meet him.  (The name of the group is supposed to evoke Alcoholics Anonymous, which is sometimes colloquially called “Friends of Bill W,” or just “Friends of Bill,” an allusion to William Griffith Wilson, a founder of AA.)  Neither has anyone in the group itself: he’s sort of a Godot-esque figure.  He always sends word he’ll come to the next meeting, but never does.  (Tonight he’s dealing with a “coding emergency.”)  He makes contact with the group members (by phone, evidently) to tell them where they’ll be meeting—the venue apparently changes periodically—and to assure that there are always eight attendees (an element of mysticism or magical realism because . . . well, how can you make sure of that?).  Aside from forming a musical octet, there are eight bits in a byte, the most basic element of computer programming.

There’s a wide streak of mysticism in the play—we’ve already heard about Marvin’s encounter with God and Tarot figures in it broadly.  In the program’s list of songs, each one, and therefore its singer/testifier, is identified with a Tarot card.  (Aleister Crowley, a British occultist and magician on whom I’m preparing a post, gets a passing mention, as does Arthur C. Clarke, the sci-fi writer who wrote the story on which Stanley Kubrick based the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.  One character quotes Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”) 

The production is really excellent.  I liked the acting/singing by the eight-actor ensemble (especially Bashian and Gibson, two cast members with gorgeous bass voices that just made the Linney rumble—along with my gut!), the stage direction (Annie Tippe) and musical direction (Or Matias), and the design (along with Rubin and Vasta for scenery—which includes the “corridor” between the Pershing Square’s lobby extension to the performance space/auditorium—there’s also Brenda Abbandandolo for costumes, Christopher Bowser for lights, and Hidenori Nakajo for sound). 

The performers are adept at vocal harmony, which I understand is difficult, especially when it’s close harmony (when each voice sings notes within a short range of the next singer), and handle several different styles of a capella singing.  (Each actor had a pitch pipe in a pocket, the only non-human instrument on stage.)  Even though each character’s share is individual, other group members—sometimes just one to make a duet, sometimes all seven to make a (yes) octet—join in and harmonize with the sharer—except for Velma’s poignant “Beautiful,” near the end, Malloy’s only solo.  (There is a number called “Solo” in the middle of the play, but it’s actually a duet between Karly and Ed, the only two characters who share a similar obsession—Internet porn and the perils of on-line dating.)  At “Friends of Saul,” support also comes in the form of musical support.

I was a little trepidatious of the a capella-musical idea, but it was very nice.  One theatergoer commented on a message board that “you don’t even notice there aren’t instruments,” and while that’s a little hyperbolic, it’s not far wrong.  (It’s less that I didn’t notice than that it didn’t matter.)  Malloy’s compositions range from chamber choir singing to hymns to harmonious songs and impassioned ballads.

In the end, though, I’d have to say that the lack of a narrative or throughline, the absence of any kind of dramatic tension, the one-dimensional nature of the characters about whom we know nothing except their Internet issues, the dearth of human connections among any of the characters would have worn very thin had Octet run longer than its 100 minutes—and the a capella score might have begun to sound stylistically repetitive.

My problem is two-fold, however.  One, the less significant issue, is that I’m not so into the Internet life that I understood all the jargon and references that are dropped in the script.  I’m also not convinced that there is such a thing as Internet addiction in the same sense as alcoholism, compulsive gambling, or drug addiction.  The bigger problem for me, though, is that I don’t really understand what Malloy is on about in the play.  We heard a lot of people—well, eight people, of course—explain (sort of) their individual obsessions (gaming, social media, porn, and so on), but I don’t know what Malloy is telling us overall.  What’s his point?  From what I gather about Malloy (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, 2012), he’s not an “entertainer”; he makes some kind of point, however idiosyncratic.  He tackles issues, so I assume there’s one here somewhere—but I don’t see it (yet).

Still, I enjoyed the work!  (Is that not strange?  Someone said that in a play.)

As of 9 June, Show-Score gave Octet an average score of 82 based on its survey of 27 published reviews.  (All Octet’s Show-Score statistics are very good, in my estimation.)  The site’s highest-rated notice was a 98 for Front Row Center, followed by four 95’s, including TheaterMania, New York magazine/Vulture, and TheaterScene.net.  The lowest rating, 60, went to Broadway Blog, backed by two 65’s for Theatre is Easy and the Hollywood Reporter.  Eighty-nine percent of the reviews were positive and 11% were mixed; there were no negative notices.  My round-up will comprise 19 reviews, including, as usual, a couple Show-Score didn’t collect.

Barbara Schuler of Long Island’s Newsday characterized Octet in her “Bottom Line”: “Elegant a cappella music, but a frightening look at our obsession with technology.”  Noting that the eight technology-addicted characters in the play “could be any of us,” Schuler reported that Octet explores “the perils of our collective obsession with devices.”  The ND reviewer thought that “the show asks a lot of its impressive cast, with each of the eight singers performing almost nonstop the challenging beats and harmonies required of this kind of music, while establishing their troubled characters.”  The performers are “all terrific” and the “music is innovative and varied.”  Schuler found that the “message derails near the end,” when Marvin recounts his meeting with God, but she acknowledged that Octet “is most definitely a cautionary tale and by the end,” and she was ready to abandon her own cell phone when she left the theater.

In the U.S. edition of the Financial Times, Max McGuinness felt that “Octet’s technosceptic theme is echoed by the musical simplicity of Malloy’s quirky gospel-cum-folk numbers,” and observed that “there is no obvious order to these anecdotes of compulsion and anomie” as the play’s progress mirrors “the random drift of internet traffic.”  McGuinness judged that “Annie Tippe’s staging . . . builds steadily in intensity,” though the play “might have benefited from a slightly stronger narrative arc.”  The songs, though, “become progressively stranger, more anguished and more boisterous.”  The “no-frills songs and staging,” the FT reviewer found, “. . . create a sense that such a back-to-basics theatrical style can itself provide an antidote to technological pandemonium.”  McGuinness made the point that “Malloy and Tippe have crafted an austere-yet-joyful sanctuary from all the distractions beyond the theatre door.”

The New York Times’ Ben Brantley, playing the part of a member of “Friends of Saul,” informed us that “if you sit in on one of its sessions, you’ll feel reassured, alarmed, enlightened and truly thrilled by what you hear.”  Stepping back into his theater-reviewer role, he added, “If you choose not to attend, you will be missing what promises to be the most original and topical musical of the year.”  (This notice got only a 90 from Show-Score!)  Labeling the musical “sublime,” Brantley characterized Octet as “a portrait in song of perhaps the greatest David and Goliath struggle of our time,” referring, of course, to the Internet (AKA “the monster”) vs. “the naked and unaccompanied human voice, about as low-tech as you can get.”  Then he warns us: “Voice versus Void: You probably think you know the outcome.  You’re wrong, no matter which way you call it.” 

As for the no-tech score, the Timesman declared that the “layered and contrapuntal voices produce a dazzling spectrum of effects” as Malloy’s “score makes fractured thought audible.”  “What’s captured in these voices.” Brantley asserted, “is how we feel—seduced, exhilarated, lost and dirty—every time we turn on our computers or smartphones and fall into a time-devouring wormhole.”  In the end, Brantley’s left asking, “[J]ust who is this Saul? Is he even real? And why has he brought these particular chosen ones together?”  (The name is biblical, of course, the first  king of Israel in the Old Testament and the original name of the apostle Paul in the New Testament, but its Hebrew meaning is “one who is asked for, prayed for.”)  Brantley warned that the playwright “isn’t about to offer easy closure,” but the review-writer concluded that “I’m going to chalk up this beautiful, absorbing, disturbing work as a win for art.”

In the New York Observer, David Cote declared, “The wildly gifted composer-lyricist Dave Malloy likes his source material thick, baggy and potentially untamable.” Cote described Octet as “a kind of glee club meets twelve-step, the whole thing shrouded in cultish mystery.”  Warning that its “anthology approach can grow predictable or monotonous,” the Observer writer praised “Malloy and his shrewd director, Annie Tippe” for finding “a smart, engaging balance between satiric realism and exuberant theatricality.”  He reported that “Malloy never settles on one musical idiom or rhythmic approach” and proclaimed that “the blend of voices is sonic heaven.”  In the later part of the play, Cote found, the “already dense text starts to achieve data overload.” 

Cote asserted that Octet is “one of the most thought-provoking and soul-stirring musicals I’ve seen in ages” and felt that “it has an ingeniously woven, harmonically lush score that you’ll want to revisit.”  In the end, said Cote, after going through all of Malloy’s multifarious topics, frames of reference, and information, “instead of eyesore and brain-fog, my time with Octet made me feel more alive, more connected.”

I’m going to digress for a moment here, something I don’t usually do when I’m presenting the review round-up.  It’s clear to me that by this point in composing this report, I’m not going to come to terms with Malloy’s overall point.  But David Cote seems to have put together a cogent explanation that I can accept as a valid and worthwhile theme for Octet.  I couldn’t articulate it, but he has, pretty well, so I’m going to quote it here:

[The] globe-spanning network is an amazing achievement of technology, ingenuity, and human consciousness, which has nevertheless drained joy and wonder from life, made us more hateful, stupid and impatient.  Granted total control, the intellect will destroy the spirit; if all of human experience is contained in that doohickey in your back pocket, who needs the world?

I’m sure other viewers will have other thoughts about what Malloy wants us to take away from Octet, but Cote’s statement is as good as any I can imagine, and it satisfies me.  (Thanks, David.)

In one of Show-Score’s second-highest-rated reviews (95), Sara Holdren’s notice for New York magazine and Vulture, the reviewer called Octet “extraordinary” and said that it “uses a simple structure to go spelunking into a complex, ominous, continuously exquisite series of caves.”  Holdren holds that, from the “an online rage-storm” over the casting decision for The Great Comet, “one of the many exhilarating aspects of Octet is that it shows an artist making lemonade, turning painful experience into intricate, gorgeous music.”  The reviewer frim New York observed, “The marvelous actor-singers of Octet feel like tentative, searching acolytes—fragile little animals in the grip of a great god of their own creation, seeking a way out of a toxic kind of worship.”  Holdren felt, “Under Annie Tippe’s agile, imaginative direction . . . every one of the show’s actors is balancing a full, many-shaded character with a masterful musical performance.”  The review-writer’s final word was that “Octet is that rare and thrilling thing: a new musical that really does feel new.”  She added, “Formally, it’s both unique and invigorating—and it’s rigorous and straightforward enough in its structure for its ideas to spiral into rich, dense fractals.”

Octet “arrives with high expectations—and from its first moments it delights and transports,” pronounced Sarah Larson in the New Yorker.  “Like most of Malloy's works,” Larson explained, “‘Octet’ is maddeningly overextended by a song or two, but, over all [sic], his gorgeous music and prodigious gifts for synthesis—of voices, musical styles, humor, ideas—uplift and surprise in revelatory ways.”  She concluded: “When the outstanding eight-member cast sings together, it feels like exactly what theatre is for, and transcendently IRL.”

Frank Scheck, in one of the two second-lowest-rated reviews on Show-Score (65), said in his “Bottom Line” in the Hollywood Reporter: “Always interesting, but goes a little far afield.”  Scheck characterized Octet as “a thoughtful, if simultaneously overstuffed and underdramatized, exploration of an issue that couldn't be more relevant.”  The HR writer complained, “The show fairly bursts at the seams to include themes relating to religion, mysticism, philosophy and science,” which he felt was symptomatic of the playwright’s “overreaching.”  Furthermore, Scheck found, “The repetitive structure eventually becomes wearisome, with the lack of dramatic action preventing the piece from engaging the heart as well as the mind” and he had problems with “the sketchily defined characters.”  On the other hand, he felt, “The composer's talents, however, are on ample display in his stirring music and intricate, frequently polyphonic arrangements” and the “performers handle the complex, a cappella material beautifully . . . while also demonstrating crack comic timing”; he praised Tippe’s “unfussy staging.”  Scheck’s conclusion:

Octet ultimately doesn't live up to its considerable artistic ambitions, but the show once again reveals its writer-composer to be one of the most creatively audacious talents working in musical theater today.  It makes one eager to see what his restless mind comes up with next, assuming that he, unlike his characters, has enough self-control to unplug once in a while.

In Time Out New York, Adam Feldman delighted in observing, “Dave Malloy never stops surprising you.  His songs start in one mode, then veer into another and another.”  He dubbed the play “splendidly wrought,” describing the play structure “at first, episodic and confessional . . . .  But the show gets progressively spikier and weirder.”  By the end, Feldman reported, the play “explodes into full-on magical realism.”  Of the production, the man from TONY stated, “Under Annie Tippe’s taut direction, all eight bits of Octet’s byte-size cast perform Malloy’s challenging compositions with exceptional skill.”  In conclusion, Feldman wrote: “As Broadway shows increasingly rely on massive spectacle, Octet proves that well-polished pieces of eight are enough.”

On New York Theatre Guide, Brittany Crowell described Octet as “part chorale, part drama, part magic.”  Crowell went on: “It transcends form, creating a new, pertinent, relevant, humorous, and relatable way of storytelling.”  Just as I did, Crowell found, “The ensemble of the piece was spectacular.”  As the NYTG reviewer saw it, “Octet is less of a cautionary tale of the troubles of using social media, although this is a general effect of the piece, but an exploration of the new terrain that we find ourselves in, our struggle to contend with this new beginning, and an endeavor to find a balance through community and empathy.”

Crowell also posted a cross-reference to this review on Front Row Center, where Show-Score awarded it a score of 98, the play’s highest.  On FRC, Crowell characterized the play as “a genius exploration of our relationship with technology” which is “[p]erformed by a strong ensemble.” 

Carol Rocamora of Theater Pizzazz was thrilled to report, “Leave it to the talented, unpredictable Dave Malloy to come up with a surprising new topic and an arresting new theatrical form to fit it.”  Rocamora characterized the play as “the most original idea of the theatre season—a ‘chorus line’ of internet addicts, each singing their songs and telling their tales.”   The production, said the TP reviewer, is “[i]ngeniously staged by Annie Tippe” with a “talented ensemble of singers” with “beautiful voices.”  It’s “an immensely entertaining show” said Rocamora, “—that is, if it weren’t so unsettling.”  In the end, the reviewer declared, “It’s a healing new-age musical for our troubled times.”

For New York Theater, Jonathan Mandell dubbed Octet “a beautifully sung a cappella chamber musical” and he added, “So much feels so smart and spot-on about this latest theater piece from [Dave Malloy] that theatergoers may want to excuse the show’s excesses.”  But Mandell has a serious complaint.  He found that “rather than applying . . . intelligence to make an arcane subject accessible, as he has done in much of his work, Malloy too often attempts just the opposite in ‘Octet.’  He injects the arcane into what is to most New York theatergoers an inherently accessible subject.”  One example was the language Malloy put into the mouths of his characters, which Mandell found too “high-toned” and another was the introduction of the Tarot which he said “added nothing for me.”  The NY Theater writer, however, concluded, “Luckily, this first musical produced by Signature Theatre brings out enough of what’s best about Malloy’s work—thanks to Annie Tippe’s lively direction, the eight-member cast’s lovely singing, and the delightful musical direction by Or Matias—to justify the 100-minute respite from gazing at your screens.”

In Show-Score’s lowest-rated notice (60), Samuel L. Leiter said on the Broadway Blog that Octet’s “biggest problem is that . . . Molloy’s frequently brilliant music, sung by eight exceptional singers, fails to sustain interest without the support of an engrossing dramatic script.”  Leiter also complained that though only some songs “are clearly marked ‘hymn’ in the” program, “after a while, the reliance on a cappella gives them all a hymnal feeling.”  He added that “Molloy’s lyrics, filled with Internet terms (apps, blockers, trackers, refresh, swipe, memes, etc., etc.), range from clear to dense to opaque.”  Furthermore, the Broadway Blogger found that “there’s little interaction among the group and only a bare minimum of context for knowing any of these characters as people.  Dramatic action is nil, suspense absent, and boredom imminent.”  Nonetheless,  director Tippe “makes the most of her limited material.” 

In another 95-rated notice, David Gordon of TheaterMania labeled Octet a “thrilling and difficult work” which he thought is “like A Chorus Line—if A Chorus Line had been written in the style of an Annie Baker play.”  “Musically,” asserted Gordon, “Octet is Malloy’s most accomplished show to date,” with a “transfixing score” and “virtuosic and emotive eight-part harmonies.”  Gordon declared, “Simply on a technical level, it’s one of the most inventive scores I’ve ever heard”—though he caviled somewhat that “in some cases I wish [the songs] were as deep as they are prolix.”  The TM reviewer added, “Malloy’s book is just as crafty, but in subtler ways.”  In his conclusion, Gordon stated, “Octet is one of those rare shows that’s ambitious as hell and actually delivers on it’s [sic] promise.”  He warned, though, “It’s admittedly not for everyone—if you thought The Great Comet was impenetrable, this is even trickier.”  In his final declaration, Gordon asserted, “Octet ultimately delivers the one-of-a-kind feeling that emerges only when you’re able to lose yourself in a musical, as opposed to the black mirror you're reading this on.”

On TheaterScene.net, another 95-rated review, Joel Benjamin dubbed Octet a “sophisticated mass of brilliance” and added that Tippe shaped it around the sensational talents of a small cast which performs miracles of acting and singing.”  Benjamin’s final word on the production was: “This is an important jewel of a show.” 

Deirdre Donovan of CurtainUp exclaimed in her first line: “Hat’s [sic] off to the new Off Broadway musical Octet.”  “It is more original than most of the entertainments now on Broadway,” she added.  “Performed by first-rate a cappella singers, it has a pristine sound that is rarely heard in contemporary musical theater pieces.”  The play, wrote Donovan, “greets the eye with a plain tableau and the ear with sublime harmonies.”  The CU reviewer described the play: ‘It is a concatenation of hymns, chants, dirges and a fugue, all interspersed with some stylized dance movements that are extensions of the music.”  As her final remark, Donovan reminds us that “theatergoers are more likely to remember [Octet] for its down-to-earth message about unplugging from one’s hi-tech devices for a while to truly reconnect with people and reawaken to the wonders of the human voice.”

As it frequently does, New York Stage Review posted two notices.  In one, David Finkle acknowledged, “There’s nothing so exciting at the theater than suddenly realizing what’s unfolding before you is original.”  He warned, however, that “it may be that too much originality can have a diminishing effect, not a development often pondered.”  An example, said Finkle, is Octet, and “We’re mighty lucky to have it,” he added.  Director Tippe’s “done a crackerjack job.”  Finkle cautions that “the grappled subjects sound weighty—and are—but the substantial delicacy of Malloy’s music (and for the most part unrhymed) lyrics vitiates anything approaching the turgid.”  But NYSR reviewer A complained that this is “where all that originality starts to thicken.  Malloy dispenses so much of his brilliantly subtle music . . . that before the final fade-out his score threatens to evaporate into the old too-much-of-a-good-thing.”  In the end, Finkle makes a recommendation: “It’s not a bad idea for anyone interested in the best musicals—if not necessarily the most accessible ones—to meet in a hopeful, and in no way foolish hurry, at Dave Malloy’s astounding Octet.”

On the same site, NYSR reviewer B, Michael Sommers, bemoaned the poor choices currently available on Broadway.  “Perhaps like me, you wish for something fresh, original, and adult in musical theater that speaks to our current times and troubles,” he wondered.  His answer: “Look no further than Octet, given a bracing world premiere.”  Sommers proclaimed that the show is “so contemporary and smart—and challenging—that it’s unlikely to ever be a Broadway crowd-pleaser.”  He recommended that “if this sounds like something for you, grab a ticket now.”  Sommers reported that the a capella “music and performance . . . are developed way beyond mere do-wop into polyphonic glory as the show’s dozen or so numbers comprise a song cycle of wonderful variety.  The wordplay of these songs likewise is sophisticated and compelling.”  Further, “[t]he music, lyrics, book, and vocal arrangements are ingeniously crafted.”  But Sommers acknowledged that “nothing is perfect in this show-biz world” and he presented a cavil: “there are a couple of loose ends in this musical that need tighter integration.”  He referred to the references to Tarot and a couple of other small complaints.  Applauding “the all-around excellence of this production staged by Annie Tippe” and her “highly-talented” cast, Sommers concluded that Octet is “a remarkable new musical to be savored by audiences wise enough to appreciate its quality.”

“Melding naturalism with mysticism,” James Wilson found on Talkin’ Broadway that “Octet is utterly beguiling.”  He affirmed, “Director Annie Tippe makes terrific use of the space, and the eight-person ensemble is uniformly excellent.”  The TB review-writer found that “the singers' blended harmonies and vocal sound effects provide the stunning musical arrangements and underscoring.” 

On Theatre Reviews Limited, David Roberts wrote somewhat cryptically, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in Dave Malloy’s a cappela musical ‘Octet.’”  Though he found “some of the addictions [exposed in the play] . . . readily recognizable,” making “strong connections to the audience,” he found “others like Velma’s . . . arcane references to Tarot and other addictive and destructive online spirituality communities become elitist and pretentious.”  He continued, “There are times when some of the threads seem without any meaningful content and become, unfortunately, lost on the audience.”  On the other hand, Roberts found Malloy’s “music . . . exquisite in every way.”  The actors, under Tippe’s direction, move “with Jungian synchronicity and the grace displayed in synchronized swimming.”  (I know what the latter is, but the former is another cryptic comment.  And by the way, how does Roberts know what the audience gets or loses?  Did he take a survey—or use telepathy?)