\n<\/p>\n
Amy\u2019s tour, as it happens, is on pause; her opening act bailed, and she needs to find a new one. Sensing talent as well as a spark, she enlists Lila and her band, the Lonely Few \u2014 which also includes Paul (Thomas Silcott), on drums, and JJ (Helen J Shen), on keyboard \u2014 to join her for the rest of the tour.<\/p>\n
On the road, romance ensues, and so do family complications: Lila\u2019s fretful guilt as Adam spirals without her, still grieving their mother\u2019s death; Amy\u2019s enduring anger that when Paul \u2014 the drummer who was her stepdad long ago \u2014 left her alcoholic mother, back in New Orleans, he left her, too.<\/p>\n
With a habit of cutting people out of her life, Amy is more of a loner than Lila, but each of them has constructed a carapace. The question is whether they are brave enough to shed them for each other.<\/p>\n
This intimate, tightly woven musical envelops the audience: with Sibyl Wickersheimer\u2019s wraparound set, which seats some of the crowd in the bar; Adam Honor\u00e9\u2019s rock-show lighting, whose beams touch all of us; and the pulse of the songs, which we feel in our bodies \u2014 the hard-driving numbers and the quiet ones, too. (Music direction is by Myrna Conn, leading a mostly offstage four-piece band. Sound design, worryingly muddy at first, is by Jonathan Deans and Mike Tracey.)<\/p>\n
It might seem for a while that Daunno, a Tony nominee in 2019 for Daniel Fish\u2019s \u201cOklahoma!<\/a>\u201d revival, is being squandered in a too-small role. But each of the men gets a number in which he demonstrates the depth of his affection \u2014 Dylan and Adam for Lila, Paul for Amy \u2014 and each of the actors smashes it. Daunno\u2019s tender reprise of \u201cWaking Up Thirty,\u201d a song about surrendering to dead-end, small-town American life, is devastating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n