Randolph’s latest stage production, Edges The Musical, is offering students a unique opportunity.
“It’s a song cycle, so there are no scenes and no dialogue,” said director Stephanie Earl. “It really gives us a chance to build the show together. It’s been fun to dissect each character in each song with the students and figure out what it means to the show as a whole. I’ve been really excited to get their feedback.”
Edges was written by the Tony and Academy Award-winning composing team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hanson, La La Land) during their sophomore year at the University of Michigan.
The songs focus on a group of young adults asking classic coming-of-age questions.
“The songs have a lot of depth,” Earl said. “A lot of them feel very conversational. They tell individual stories in each piece, and they all fit together thematically.”
Edges was first produced in 2005, featuring 13 songs reflecting on universal issues like love, commitment, identity, and meaning. Several of those songs were swapped out for new ones during a 2007 revival, and groups that stage the show can choose from both versions.
“Pasek and Paul have this great letter they present to anyone doing their show, saying that it is up to the production which songs you want to include and what order you want to put them in, which is very unusual,” Earl said. “Generally when you work on a show, you cannot change anything and you can’t move things around. We loved the flexibility of the show and that the composing team built that into being a fun part of the project.”
It is fun, but not without its challenges.
“It’s more challenging to figure out how to go from one song to the next,” Earl said. “It would be very easy for it to turn into a concert. We’re really trying to keep the action continuous. We want it to feel like a piece of theatre, even though there’s no spoken text.”
Randolph’s staging includes a cast of 10 students singing 13 songs that Earl said have a pop-rock, early 2000s feel to them.
“It’s a really strong, special cast that I have a lot of trust and faith in,” she said. “There’s a maturity to all of the performances. The songs are not easy to sing, and they are really working hard to dig in and make them their own. They’re getting to show off their vocal chops in ways people haven’t seen yet.”
Performances of Edges the Musical are scheduled for Feb. 15-17 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 17 and 18 at 2 p.m. Get tickets at www.randolphcollege.edu/tickets.
Tags: department of performing arts