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"Nerds' at PTC (second review)
Steve Cohen
When adolescent brains
outpace their emotions
By STEVE COHEN
For months I’ve been wondering which books to bring home to teach my 13-year-old the history of the computer on which he spends so much of his time. Now my quandary is ended. Instead of giving him books, I’ll bring him to Nerds, which provides the salient facts as part of an amusing musical.
By sticking close to the truth, the playwrights have fashioned a bright satire. For starters, it is true that Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs met at the Homebrew Computer Club, the setting for the first scene of this world-premiere musical. And the principals themselves have revealed their sometimes-unsavory machinations in books and TV documentaries.
Nerds is aided by our universal fascination with emerging adolescents, as in the current Broadway favorites Spring Awakening and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Nerds picks up where Spelling Bee leaves off. Young Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were narrow-band achievers like the spellers in Spelling Bee before they found wealth in cyberspace. There’s much appeal in the travails of geeks whose brains are developing faster than their emotions and their social graces.
Another plus is the contrast between the two leading players: Super-cool, hippie Jobs versus the bumbling Gates. History has provided a nice dramatic arc as well, as the less-accomplished youngster turns out to become the dominant man and the other guy goes through desperate days before re-emerging with the i-Pod.
It’s not just that computers impact all our lives; the show succeeds because the trajectories of Gates and Jobs are interesting and involve dramatic conflict, and because both of them started as such gauche adolescents.
Jim Poulos is the awkward Gates and Charlie Pollock is the groovy Jobs. Chandra Lee Schwartz and Emily Shoolin play their idealistic pals, personifying some of the smaller companies that Gates seduces on his climb to dominance.
Much of the humor comes from peripheral applications of the computer age. Who has not been frustrated when phoning for tech support to reach a man with an American-sounding name and an Indian accent who recites scripted answers to our questions? The musical is full of snappy dialogue and only runs out of gas near the end, with a lame dueling scene. My colleague and editor Dan Rottenberg felt the play's inventiveness ended much earlier in the evening, but I disagree.
Books and lyrics are by Jordan Allen-Dutton and Erik Weiner, and the catchy music is by Hal Goldberg. Nerds is packaged effectively by director Philip William McKinley and choreographer Joey McKneely, who did the same for the glitzy Broadway musical The Boy From Oz.
To read Dan Rottenberg's review, click here.
outpace their emotions
By STEVE COHEN
For months I’ve been wondering which books to bring home to teach my 13-year-old the history of the computer on which he spends so much of his time. Now my quandary is ended. Instead of giving him books, I’ll bring him to Nerds, which provides the salient facts as part of an amusing musical.
By sticking close to the truth, the playwrights have fashioned a bright satire. For starters, it is true that Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs met at the Homebrew Computer Club, the setting for the first scene of this world-premiere musical. And the principals themselves have revealed their sometimes-unsavory machinations in books and TV documentaries.
Nerds is aided by our universal fascination with emerging adolescents, as in the current Broadway favorites Spring Awakening and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Nerds picks up where Spelling Bee leaves off. Young Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were narrow-band achievers like the spellers in Spelling Bee before they found wealth in cyberspace. There’s much appeal in the travails of geeks whose brains are developing faster than their emotions and their social graces.
Another plus is the contrast between the two leading players: Super-cool, hippie Jobs versus the bumbling Gates. History has provided a nice dramatic arc as well, as the less-accomplished youngster turns out to become the dominant man and the other guy goes through desperate days before re-emerging with the i-Pod.
It’s not just that computers impact all our lives; the show succeeds because the trajectories of Gates and Jobs are interesting and involve dramatic conflict, and because both of them started as such gauche adolescents.
Jim Poulos is the awkward Gates and Charlie Pollock is the groovy Jobs. Chandra Lee Schwartz and Emily Shoolin play their idealistic pals, personifying some of the smaller companies that Gates seduces on his climb to dominance.
Much of the humor comes from peripheral applications of the computer age. Who has not been frustrated when phoning for tech support to reach a man with an American-sounding name and an Indian accent who recites scripted answers to our questions? The musical is full of snappy dialogue and only runs out of gas near the end, with a lame dueling scene. My colleague and editor Dan Rottenberg felt the play's inventiveness ended much earlier in the evening, but I disagree.
Books and lyrics are by Jordan Allen-Dutton and Erik Weiner, and the catchy music is by Hal Goldberg. Nerds is packaged effectively by director Philip William McKinley and choreographer Joey McKneely, who did the same for the glitzy Broadway musical The Boy From Oz.
To read Dan Rottenberg's review, click here.
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