I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London
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Your support makes all the difference.The original 1995 production of John Adams's Los Angeles earthquake musical, which the composer describes as "a polyphonic love story in the style of a Shakespeare comedy", visited the Edinburgh Festival, where it looked decidedly skinny in the wake of the composer's two previous grand operas, Nixon in China, which premiered in 1987, and The Death of Klinghoffer, from 1991.
But revived in the unexpected quarters of Stratford East in a co-production with the Barbican, and in the context of other recent natural disasters in New Orleans, Haiti and Chile, the show sounds poignantly renewed notes of poetry, resilience and tragic despair.
Seven twentysomethings – including a reformed gang leader, a Baptist preacher, a political refugee from El Salvador, a lawyer, a family-planning counsellor, a troubled cop and a television news reporter – have their lives literally shaken apart in the 1994 Northridge rumble.
The title, a quote from a survivor, provides the stunning chorale that frames the rest of the late poet June Jordan's sharp and touching libretto. And Adams, writing consciously here in the American musical theatre traditions of Gershwin, Bernstein and even Sondheim, produces a riveting collection of "musical chapters" drawing on blues, gospel, pop and funk.
The production, by Kerry Michael and Matthew Xia, might have been more crisply designed – the stage looks like a school gym with insulation problems, and the video sequences are a mistake – but the cast is exceptional, and it's a treat to hear the eight-piece band under the musical direction of Clark Rundell in the pit.
Cynthia Erivo and Anna Mateo are bursting with richly voiced talent, and it's good to see Natasha J Barnes as the TV girl ("How far can I go in a car with a cop?") developing the promise on display in Spring Awakening. Leon Lopez and Jason Denton score heavily in jazz and funk idioms, with moves to match. Excellent work, too, from Stewart Charlesworth as the cop and Colin Ryan as the Vietnamese lawyer.
Ends tomorrow (020 8534 0310; Stratfordeast.com)
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