‘Walk on Through’ review: messages, in song, from a museum novice
Broadway star Gavin Creel had been a New Yorker for 20 years before visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time in 2019.
He realizes this is embarrassing information. In “Walk through: Confessions of a museum novice”, his new show at MCC Theater, he makes that admission in the opening number.
“I’m ashamed, like I just need to hide,” he sings. “Why have I never been here? Well, I think anyone can guess, but it’s on the Upper East Side.’
It’s a fun joke, and endearing in a particularly Manhattan-esque way – because who among us hasn’t been put off by the prospect of a simple crosstown trip to some cultural treasure that people from all over the world come here to to experience? But it’s also slippery: the flash of vulnerability is quickly obscured by charm.
Superficiality is a curse of this uncertain show, for which Creel wrote the book, lyrics and soft pop music. Commissioned by the Met’s Live Arts Department, and performed at the museum in 2021, it has the dispiriting feel of an advertisement for the Met’s collections – and despite the dozens of works of art projected on stage, it’s not a convincing .
Although Creel tries to convince us that he has ultimately succumbed to the magic of the museum, little of “Walk on Through” seems sincere. Much of it seems forced, as if he’s trying to deliver what he thinks is expected in response to the art: depth, revelation.
“Oh,” he says, after looking at the idealized lovers in Pierre-Auguste Cot’s oil painting “The storm,” from 1880: “I’m in it now – just carried away in the fantasy of this place.”
That bit of dialogue follows one of the better songs, the wistful “What Is This?”, sung mainly by band members Madeline Benson (the show’s music director) and Chris Peters, but it rings hollow.
The band, which also includes Scott Wasserman and Corey Rawls (a beautiful soft touch on the drums), does great work on generally anodyne songs. The two supporting roles are also strong: Ryan Vasquez, especially as an almost ghostly ex; and Sasha Allen with a solo – inspired by Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 16th century “Judith with the head of Holofernes” – that feels like it was ripped from a musical theater epic, and which Creel deflates with a lighthearted last line.
On a set by I. Javier Ameijeiras that suggests the architecture of the Met, with projections by David Bengali and lighting by Jiyoun Chang, it’s an odd one out of a show. Directed by Linda Goodrich, it avoids being a lecture, but also identifies little of the art we see. (A wall of images and text just outside the room helps with this.) It explores the collection as a search for yourself, but never goes deep.
During one song, “Hands on You,” Creel jumps into the aisles to rhythmically clap the audience along — though at the performance I attended, the participation seemed more indulgent than enthusiastic. The song tries hard to be a cheeky celebration of gay men’s sexuality, but the subject matter is jejune: powerful lust for a bevy of ancient marble nudes.
Yet “Hands on You” is intended as a response to the abundant Christian imagery in the Met’s galleries—or, more accurately, to the rejection it implies for Creel as a gay man. Albrecht Dürer’s “Salvator Mundi‘ (circa 1505) is the icon of that tension and the catalyst for the show’s final and best song, ‘Unfinished World’. Beautiful and emotionally filled, it is a prayer of self-acceptance in the face of a hostile tradition.
Then the projections of artwork begin again, killing the moment, and the show ends as it began: as an advertisement.
Walk through: Confessions of a museum novice
Through January 7 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes.