Bl!nk a New Musical (Act I)

Or: Pink Goes With Everything

The excitement is palpable. From dingy apartment at a rural college and in the Boise Contemporary Theater. The former, in the world of the play, is because Natalie (Evie Elkins) and Sadie (Sammi Van Ormer) are about to pitch the dating app of their dreams. The latter is because Grace Ward and Elke Meyers, too universally beloved members of the Boise theater scene, premier their new musical Bl!nk a celebration of love, dreams, and hope; eagerly awaited by their pink clad audience, even if it was only the first act.

Sadie and Nat are small town girls, living in a lonely world, with only each other and their gifts (Sadie as brilliant coder and Nat as a preternaturally gifted marketer) to rely on. Their dream is a stake on the 21st century gold rush: dating apps. Specifically a dating app designed for women to protect them from predators and those who would sell their data to the highest bidder (a revolutionary concept). The irony is that neither creator is much an expert in the realms of love. Nat, growing up queer in a hostile town, has never had the chance for a true, out and proud relationship while Sadie has shackled herself to her high school boyfriend Milo (Bren Trotter) with whom the spark has not so much died as been mummified and snapped its bony arms around her neck. Now is the chance for both, with the help of Addie (Kiala Siman) an itinerate investor, to make the leap onto the world stage. Will they be brave enough to jump? And will their dreams turn out to be what they really want?

Bl!nk is a new project, and as such we only got to sample the first act of the musical. Still even half a glance shows that Ward and Meyers have a happening story. It’s early days yet, and the show is not beyond polishing and a brush up of specificity. But the songs are sweet the lyrics bright and the script extremely touching, the patter especially between the two best friends, is both deliciously sparkling and natural (sometimes horrifyingly so, when Milo gets his say).

Trotter gives Milo a terrible singing voice and an insecurity about his brilliant far-too-good-for-him girlfriend that allows him to balance in our judgement between misguided sympathy and utter dickitude (Ward’s script very aptly plays Milo as antagonist and obstacle to the women he professes to love, with choruses of “ugh!”’s following his various pronouncements.) Siman’s poise and golden voice, as well as her disgust as a queer, monied ivy-leaguer in small town America, warred with her flirtation with the star struck Nat. I hope there is more for Addie in the rest of the play, and for Siman’s talents too.

Natalie’s besottedness with the out of town arrival, was only one facet of Elkin’s splendid performance. Balancing Natalie’s mix of barnstorming optimism, wry observations, and tamped down fears, they show a complex, competent character shining a light through every facet. Van Ormer, similarly crafts Sadie with a care. Using a wickedly eyebrow eyebrow and a gift for crumpling, her Sadie both charms and exasperates (though never to the point you want to throw things at her). Both actors are firm and vibrant in the showing of their friendship, the core of the musical, and both allow their characters to shine with the passion and brilliance that would be smothered in other times, and might still be today.

 “86% of genus in the world lies in wives and mothers,” Nat sighs at one point while contemplating a hell of domesticity. Thank G-d there’s a chance to move the percentage. What will happen if the girls get to Silicon Valley (set up as a promised land but famously nefarious and unkind). Will Natalie get the girl of her dreams? Will Saide ever find a man who treats her as she deserves? Will their app be the paradise shift in relationships the country is so desperately in need of? Will Milo die in a totally preventable accident of his own creation? (We can only hope.) I for one eagerly await whenever Meyers and Ward unveil their stories conclusion. And next time I’ll wear pink.