Theatre Horizon presents William Finn and James Lapine's 'A New Brain'

Sudden crisis

Steve Pacek plays Gordon Schwinn, a struggling songwriter toiling for a children's TV show host (Mr. Bungee, a frog, brilliantly captured by Doug Hara) who is suddenly felled by intense head pain. It's not dreaded cancer, but an operable brain condition — though with much risk. A New Brain follows the process of hospitalization, diagnosis, and treatment, pulling in his partner Roger (Peter Carrier), best friend Rhoda (Rachel Camp), mother (Susan Riley Stevens), and a homeless woman (Melissa Joy Hart), plus Mina Kawahara, Larry Lees, Rob Tucker, and Christian Eason, who play doctors, nurses, and other characters.

Director Matthew Decker's production soars with joy, even while dealing honestly with the pains, fears, and indignities of Gordon's situation. Finn's music, played by music director Amanda Morton and a five-person band, is almost nonstop, the show's 35 songs flowing into each other. Decker stages scene changes on Brian Dudkiewicz's unit set to fit the music. It’s an embrace of tall translucent panels arranged in a semicircle on a bright blue floor, suggesting Gordon's mind. Oona Curley's lighting uses florescent starkness as well as colorful surprises. The show's flow feels effortless, meaning that the cast and crew have mastered the staging's precision and complexity.

No antidote

Gordon is on stage constantly, often in a hospital gown; the role demands Pacek's boundless energy as well as his earnest acting and strong voice. The ensemble give distinctive performances, particularly Stevens as frenetic mother Mimi ("anything that's wrong is from his father," she insists), whose distress leads her to destroy Gordon's books while cleaning his apartment; and Hart, whose makes much more of her role than the homeless wise person cliché she seems to be. Hara balances Mr. Bungee's diva-ish obnoxiousness with his motivational role in Gordon's imagination.

Though A New Brain is often very funny, Gordon's journey from confronting an early death to his new, complicated post-op life is often harrowing, and this is where Decker's production perfectly complements Finn's work: he provides that humor as an antidote, not a replacement, for Gordon's all-too-real crisis.