When my wife and I were looking for shows to take in during our Broadway Blitz last week, we saw a listing for a new musical, “Maybe Happy Ending.” It was described as a love story between two robots. We looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Um, no.”
But then we heard from people we trust that the show was marvelous, so we got tickets, and I’m really glad we did.
The show stars Darren Criss, who we saw in 2022 opposite Laurence Fishburne and Sam Rockwell in a revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” (my review is here). Although Criss had the least showy role in the play, he held his own.
In “Maybe Happy Ending,” Criss has stepped up his game several notches to play Oliver, a Helper Bot model 3 whose owner, James (Marcus Choi), gave up on him several years ago. Oliver now lives in a robot retirement home, where replacement parts for his obsolete operating system are scarce. But Oliver is sure James is coming back to get him while he lives his solitary life.
One day, there’s a knock at the door, which Oliver opens to find Claire (Helen J. Shen), a Helper Bot model 5 who has lived across the hall for years, though they’ve never met. She’s a more advanced Helper Bot, but her system requires more frequent charging, and her cord is broken, so she asks Oliver if she can borrow his.
That’s what you call your basic robot meet-cute. Though he’s very wary, Oliver eventually opens up to Claire, they become friends, and go out into the world for an adventure I won’t give away.
There have been a lot of humanoid robots in pop culture over the last six decades, but the way Criss stands, sits, turns, and talks as Oliver is the best I’ve seen since Robert Shields, who essentially invented the robot moves as a street performer in the 1970s. He then taught them to his wife/partner Lorene Yarnell, and the duo became a must-book act on every variety show on 1970s TV — then even had their own series. Go search for them on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.
Criss’ Oliver is not quite as stilted, but is a significant upgrade from other pop culture robots of the past, from Dick Gautier as Hymie on “Get Smart” to Brent Spiner as Data on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” through Alicia Vikander as Ava in “Ex Machina.” Criss gives Oliver a genuine personality as he learns to interact with Claire, and she never mentions his plastic hairdo.
Shen, in her Broadway debut, plays Claire as a Helper Bot with smoother moves and better conversational skills. She also has a terrific singing voice, which melds with Criss’ beautifully. The songs — by Will Aronson and Hue Park, who also wrote the book — set the tone for every scene perfectly without the bombast of any Andrew Lloyd Webber musical you care to name.
They are supported by Choi, who plays multiple roles, as well as truly astonishing set design by Dane Laffrey and lighting by Ben Stanton that use sliding panels and moving sets to draw our attention and help us keep up with the characters, as well as some video effects and holograms that fill in the backstory. I’ll be shocked if “Maybe Happy Ending” doesn’t win Tony Awards in several of the technical categories.
I can’t think of a single negative thing to tell you about “Maybe Happy Ending.” It certainly convinced me not to pre-judge musicals about robots falling in love again.