Stereophonic (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

David Adjmi’s extraordinary new play, Stereophonic, does not take the obvious path and that is what makes it one of the best plays of the decade. Art is not easy and this play painstakingly reveals how so much time, labor, love, loss, and literal tape it can take to make that art happen.

Set in a recording studio between 1976 and 1977, a band on the cusp of something, is trying to record their second album. The band, made up of two couples along with drummer/manager, Simon (Christ Stack), are at a crossroads and in the course of this year, in this wood paneled room everything will change.

At the start, Brits Reg (Will Brill) and Holly (Juliana Canfield) have split up while Americans Peter (Tom Pecinka) and Diana (Sarah Pidgeon) are still going strong. But relational tides will turn several times.

It is hard not to project a bit of Fleetwood Mac recording Rumours onto this. But it is entirely fictional.

What impressed me when I first saw the play Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, was that every version of the heyday of sex, drugs, rock and roll we’ve seen in movies and TV, has always glorified it at least a little. You get the sense that the writer is lamenting they were not there, or that they wish they were there, or that maybe things were better in the past. This troublesome nostalgia is too often embedded in the material.

Adjami avoids that entirely which is what makes this so refreshing, eye-opening, and honest. His vision of this rock and roll world, includes a bag of blow and plenty of sex, but in this recording studio it is more about the screaming, fights, sleepless nights, anguish, and fear. It is about people trying to make art and none of it is pretty.

Maybe that is why we want so much to imagine this with a real band because it actually feels like a secret time machine to the past and we are getting a front row seat to something incredible, terrible, and heartbreaking all at the same time. The 1970s jetlag does not feel good but we have learned a valuable lesson by the end.

We encounter several neglectful to abusive man-babies, coked out of their minds, occasionally making great music, but, for sure, ruining every relationship in their life along the way. For the women, it is a hundred times worse and danced backwards in high-heeled go-go boots as they tiptoe around fragile egos, fighting for their art, and trying to survive with their sanity.

There is no way to express my gratitude for how clearly, carefully, and distinctively Adjmi colors in the misogyny and sexism here. It is as natural in this play and blends in as seamlessly as the earth tone décor of the 1970s so accurately rendered in the costuming and set design. It is simply the air they were breathing.

Importantly, Adjmi also avoids turning these men into one-note monsters. Truly a testament to the writing, as well as director Daniel Aukin’s astute direction, and the cast’s restraint.

These are just regular, human men which makes them a lot more familiar and no less horrifying. They are fallible and controlling and probably think they are pretty good guys.

Seeing the show for a second time on Broadway, it has lost none of its power or intimacy. But this second glance made me really appreciate was how the men in this room are each unique and specific kinds of shitheads. A true 1970s rainbow array and I loved how we got to meet them, watch them live, love, lose their way through life, and then leave them behind when we left the theater.

Even more, the women get to be full human beings with wants and needs, however ignored, neglected, or sabotaged by their partners. They curl up with each other in the studio, whispering or laughing in their own world, separate and apart from the men sometimes. The play, performances, and direction make it clear that these women are their own people, even if no one else in the 1970s room might see them that way. They have to strategically, repeatedly, and at a great cost to themselves, keep pushing for their voices to be heard. Even Holly tries to explain to the sound engineer Grover that men just see women as “shapes” not people. Grover might not get it but we do.

This is all done with an incredibly subtle hand which is what makes this play so satisfying.

Tom Pecinka, Sarah Pidgeon (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Diana and Peter have a relationship going back to their youth. Pecinka and Pidgeon manage to communicate that longtime intimacy, showing their deep understanding for each other, a shorthand in language, and the frustrating limits of this dynamic. She is vulnerable and worried about her songwriting and begs for his support as a partner not an album producer. But he withholds it to control her. He cannot even help himself sometimes. He needs her support too but he is compelled to keep asserting his authority over her and the band. It is what eats away at all his relationships and he is at a loss to stop himself. So, the process of her choosing where to go from here, as her star is rising, is at the heart of the play.

While this is all painterly work, I do not want to neglect how goddamn funny Stereophhonic is too.

Will Brill, whose career I have followed since seeing him in Tribes a decade ago, is giving one of the most delicious performances ever. His drunken Reg is struggling. He is lost in his own little world, obsessing about houseboats. Simon calls him a “sad little man in a blanket” and he buries himself underneath that orange and burnt umber blanket kicking like a toddler having a tantrum. His longtime friendship with Simon is felt in this teasing and play. There is not a minute I do not believe they have been touring for years. They know each other’s buttons to press and avoid.

And that is true for the whole cast. We can see there is love and was love between the characters. But every challenge and setback hurts and scars. We get to see that build up over the course of the play too.

So much is left unspoken. The dialogue overlaps. The performers must communicate in their looks, gestures, and physicality. Daniel Aukin’s precise direction leads us through and in the blink of an eye, the performers turn the temperature in the room so you know when a session has been going badly.

I also don’t want to neglect talking about the music. Early on, the band enters the recording booth and gets ready to play. The scene ends before we hear the song.

The first real song we get to hear is a Peter song that he just kind of vamps his way through and will fill in the details on later–so revealing of who he is and his process. Next we hear a Diana song which is deeply felt, full of vivid imagery and poetry, and you immediately understand why he’s been trying to hold her back because she will surpass him (if she has not already).

Will Butler’s score for this show makes you think you know these songs. They are vaguely familiar (in a Meetwood Flac kind of way) like they were found in a vault from the 1970s and dusted off. They are rich enough that you want to hear take after take with nuanced variations in the sound recordings (shout out to Ryan Rumery’s soon to be legendary sound design which makes these recording sessions aurally electric) until the band nails the song.

At three hours, the play wants you to feel like you’ve been locked in this recording studio as long as the band has been trapped there.  What should have only taken them weeks has gone on for a year. We are there for the repetition of their recording. Take after take, we see every little thing that can go wrong, as they try to just get through this. Nerves fray. Relationships morph. People change. Everyone loses sight of what they are doing and what makes a song good.

There are moments that are intentionally aurally disconnected. We hear pieces of the recording extracted from the work as a whole.  Just voices, just a bass, just a guitar. It is all these little bits flying across the room that eventually someone has to stack together, lay on top of each other, and build into the song that will change peoples lives. The fragility of making art is right in front of us and we have been on board for the whole tumultuous ride.

We get this beautiful and agonizing glimpse of the risks, luck, and talent that come together an alchemical mix when making an album.  It is a rare gift and so is this play.