'Midnight' Off-Broadway review — Todrick Hall's new musical goes big

Read our review of Midnight off Broadway, an original musical written, directed, and choreographed by Todrick Hall, who also stars in the production at the Daryl Roth Theatre.

Summary

• Todrick Hall's Midnight centers on a forbidden gay romance between a Black slave and a wealthy white man in Civil War-era America
• The show is beautifully sung, energetic, and well-designed but sometimes feels mismatched in its complicated subject matter and glossy, fantastical tone
• The show is recommended for fans of Todrick Hall and of other revisionist historical musicals, like Hamilton and & Juliet

Take its individual elements — effective choreography, atmospheric lighting, above-average lyrics, catchy music, rich and resonant voices — and Midnight is an impressive piece of work. Its music elicits head bobs, claps, and toe taps; harmonies from a vocally excellent cast flood the room like a tidal wave; and star Todrick Hall moves about the stage, for better or worse, like he’s got something to prove. Every gesture and action Hall makes, be it a swing of a pickaxe or an elegant spin in a pair of inherited shoes, feels purposeful.

But put together in context, these components create a strange, complex experience that’s not exactly unenjoyable, but somewhat dubious. Hall, doing sextuple duty as director, choreographer, book writer, composer, lyricist, and star, has developed a show that’s equal parts Hamilton, Cinderella, Brokeback Mountain, Porgy and Bess, and The Color Purple to bizarre effect. On the one hand, the story of a doomed, clandestine queer relationship between a Black slave named Rail (Hall) and the wealthy white Richard (Jeremy Beloate), the son of the family who owns Rail, is certainly intriguing, even if we are not exactly short on stories of the exploitation and oppression of Black and queer people. There are minor ways in which Hall seems able to interrogate the social dynamics at play.

Hall is certainly accomplished at a Pasek and Paul-esque pop-rock musical style, while also incorporating R&B, gospel, rap, and traditional theatre flavors. But the music is overwhelmed by a glossiness that, while pleasurable in the moment, doesn’t feel appropriate for the story at hand. The fraught, Civil War-era relationship between interracial lovers need not be totally depressing, but the bubblegum sheen and fantasy wish-fufillment creates a dissonance between the material and its tone.

With bravado worthy of The Greatest Showman, cast members sing about the upstairs/downstairs dynamic between the slaves serving in the house and the white masters dining at the party, and the effect is at once entrancing and off-putting. Midnight's interest in role-playing and historical revisionism is heavily borrowed from Lin-Manuel Miranda, as is the circular turntable on stage. But Hamilton, for all its flaws, knew when to keep the rough edges intact as opposed to sanding them down to uncanny smoothness.

Midnight is surely entertaining: The cast feels gloriously unified while also giving actors like Charlotte Odusanya, Bella Coppola, Ayana George, Kennedy Caughell, and Kolbi Jordan standout vocal moments of their own. The choreography is dynamic and creates fine stage imagery, and the score has multiple earworms. But one can’t help but wonder if Midnight is also indebted to the age of the megamusical, when spectacle mattered more than a meaningful relationship between the subject matter and the style in which it's delivered. Does Miss Saigon really need that gigantic helicopter to convey the impossibility of love in a fruitless, tragic war? Does Midnight really need clubby strobe lights while Rail gets beaten on a plantation? Probably not, but it certainly is memorable.

Midnight summary

Midnight is a pop fable about a young man, Rail, born into slavery and hired by a wealthy plantation owner’s sympathetic son Richard to help with the construction of a new integrated house. At first, given the pair's disparate positions in society, Rail is mistrustful of the well-meaning Richard. As construction continues, Richard teaches Rail how to read and the two begin to fall for one another while keeping their feelings secret from their respective lovers: scheming heiress Scarlet and daydreaming fellow slave Lily Rose.

What to expect at Midnight

The 2.5-hour Midnight is sung through from start to finish, and part of its strange spell is that it never lets the audience rest, jumping from pop hit to gospel wail to acrobatic rap verse. (This is perhaps at the expense of letting them sit with the gravity of the show’s events.) Tailor’s mannequins hold Beck Jones's beautiful satin and silk, color-accented costumes that lower at the beginning of the show for the ensemble to dress themselves in front of the audience. The charcoal-colored wood-paneled set by Morgan Large recalls a cabin, which gives the show a fireside-story quality, and Jake DeGroot's excellent lighting amplifies the pop sleekness of Midnight’s sensibilities.

What audiences are saying about Midnight

As of writing, Midnight has a 73% audience approval rating on the review aggregator Show-Score, averaged from 21 reviews. On this forum and across social media platforms, theatregoers have shared mixed responses to the show's premise and scale, but largely praised the cast's strong vocal performances.

• “The show is an endless sing through that never seems to end…” - Show-Score user NewtoNYC
• “See it if you want to catch Todrick Hall in a new musical boasting fantastic singing, impressive costuming, high-energy choreography, and vital LGBTQ+ and anti-racism themes. Don’t see it if you prefer a shorter show with a tighter book, even pacing, and a clear, focused story arc.” - Show-Score user Rose 6307
• “Tries too hard. Too dense. Everything thrown at the wall and too hard. The show needs ot be distilled into something that is better. There is nice music in it - and EXCELLENT VOCAL performances. However, the leads do not have any chemistry and the writer/director/choreographer/lead is doing too much and that’s very clear.” - Show-Score user FishieFace
• "Divisive, but worth seeing to form your own opinion." - Show-Score user always_at_a_show

Read more audience reviews of Midnight on Show-Score.

Who should see Midnight

• Fans of period musicals with a healthy dash of modern style, like Hamilton or & Juliet, will be thrilled by the invigorating Midnight.
• Todrick Hall fans will want to see this as a display of his multifaceted talents, commitment to the stage, and his career of blending musical and performance styles.
• Fans of musicals with elaborate rhymes and intricate verses will enjoy Hall's clever lyricism in Midnight.

Learn more about Midnight off Broadway

Midnight is certainly exuberant, with its individual components worthy of admiration. But they’re thrown together in a chaotic way in which subject matter, tone, and sensibility seem to clash, like night and day.

Learn more and get Midnight tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Midnight is at the Daryl Roth Theatre through November 8.

Photo credit: Midnight off Broadway. (Photos by Valerie Terranova)