Author: Thomas Caruso

“Cats” got you down? Looking for a bright new musical with costumes that will make you laugh because they’re meant to? And, for bonus points, a legible plot?

“Emojiland,” the delectably silly-smart confection that opened on Sunday night at the Duke on 42nd Street, might be just the thing — the kind of sheer fun that sends you back into the world feeling a little more upbeat.

Set inside a smartphone (yes, I know; stay with me), Keith Harrison and Laura Schein’s “Emojiland” is part rom-com, part battle for the soul of a society whose every inhabitant is an emoji.

Ruled by the sparkly, pink-haired Princess (the daffily imperious Lesli Margherita), this is a place where the cool couple, Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes (just call her Smize) and Smiling Face With Sunglasses (he goes by Sunny), have been together since version 1.0. Then software update 5.0 adds new emojis, and Nerd Face hits the scene.

Directed by Thomas Caruso, “Emojiland” is a little slow to start. It floats along at first on the candy-colored cleverness of its design (set by David Goldstein, lighting by Jamie Roderick, projections by Lisa Renkel & Possible) and the pop pleasantness of its songs. (The music director is Lena Gabrielle.)

But with the arrival of Nerd Face, played with wonderfully sweet dorkiness by George Abud (“The Band’s Visit”), you can feel the air turn electric. There is a very good chance that you will be as instantly smitten with him as he is with Smize (Schein) in her polka-dotted fit-and-flare dress. (The delightful costumes are by Vanessa Leuck, who also designed the excellent makeup.)

Nerd Face, our bespectacled, argyle-vest-clad hero, has the geek’s perennial trouble fitting in. Shunned by Sunny (Jacob Dickey), who is the hotshot leader of the pack — and, no surprise, a jerk to Smize — the lonely Nerd Face starts hanging out with Skull (Lucas Steele, deathly pale in black leather and mesh, and oozing an almost Victorian dark charisma). Too naïve to be wary, and probably as entranced by his new pal as we are, Nerd Face believes Skull when he says he wants to delete himself, and cooks up a virus to help.

That virus will, alas, come to endanger all of Emojiland. It will be up to Nerd Face to save the realm.

That includes not only the Princess but the dimwitted Prince (a deliciously campy Josh Lamon), also added with the update. Just as shallow as the Princess, he’s like a 5-year-old, but very sexual. (“Trust fall!” he announces, collapsing onto Sunny.) The Princess, the alpha of the two and a hilariously vicious mimic, has an emotional age of about 7. And she can do the splits.

Not wanting their power weakened by future updates that could bring a queen or king, the rulers commission a firewall to keep all newcomers out. Little do they know that the emoji plotting to do harm is already on the inside, and he is not a recent import.

When the Construction Worker (an appealing Natalie Weiss) refuses to build the wall, vowing instead to “tear down what’s gotten rotten,” her beloved romantic partner, the Police Officer (Felicia Boswell, ditto), sides with the royals in the interest of security.

Thanks partly to across-the-board stellar casting, “Emojiland” has deepened since its developmental run two summers ago at the recently shuttered New York Musical Festival.

In this new context, the scene where Pile of Poo (Ann Harada, in a game cameo) consoles a distraught Smize comes across as two-dimensional, relying on bathroom humor and the sight gag of Poo’s tiered dress and brown beehive. (Bobbie Zlotnick designed the terrific hair and wigs.) Poo looks great but deserves a better song and fewer awkward puns.

There is occasional trouble, too, with the orchestra overwhelming the vocals, including at the climax of Act 1. (Sound design is by Ken Goodwin.)

But these are nitpicks. This is a tonic of a musical, big-hearted and comforting.

In “Emojiland,” even world-threatening mistakes can sometimes be repaired by the very people who made them. And if you sense an allegory there, it might just cheer you up.

With a title like “Emojiland” and an aesthetic that drips with millennial energy, I admit I wasn’t expecting much from the musical, which opened at the New York Musical Festival last week (on World Emoji Day, no less). What I was greeted with was two hours of fun, catchy songs, immeasurable talent and an existential (or, should I say, “textistential”) plot that made me think way more deeply than I had planned to.

Emojiland follows the fictional titular town that exists within all of our smart phones and its people, or rather, emojis. With characters like Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes (nicknamed Smize), Nerd Face, Sunny (best known to the audience as the smiley face with sunglasses), and yes, even Pile Of Poo, the clever musical had audiences chuckling at the recognizable faces they had previously only seen on the screens of their smartphones.

We find Emojiland on the brink of a software update, 5.0, bringing in new emojis of all shapes and sizes.

The town of Emojiland is run by the Princess, played by the effortlessly genius Lesli Margherita. From the moment she steps on stage, she steals the show, singing her first number “Princess Is A Bitch.”

The first of the new emojis we meet is Nerd Face, who immediately takes a liking to Smize, but she is in a long term relationship with Sunny (“since 1.0”).

Another new emoji is Prince, played by the flamboyant scene-stealer Josh Lamon. Prince threatens the Princess’ reign at first, before the two decide to join forces, out-belting and out-dancing each other in a partnership that just makes sense.

Nerd Face links up with Skull, who talks him into using his smarts to create a virus, intended only to kill Skull himself. However, Skull smashes the potion to the ground, following the dramatic act one finale number, releasing a virus into all of Emojiland.

Meanwhile, Princess talks Construction Worker into building a firewall to keep any further updates from occurring, and thus barring new emoji from the town and securing Princess and Prince’s reign. This is against the better judgement of “CoWo” but her girlfriend “PoPo” (or Police Officer) convinces her that the Princess’ decree is law, forcing her to build the wall.

The firewall can’t save them, however, the virus has already been unleashed, causing various emoji to freeze and crash. In a heartbreaking number, CoWo is infected by the virus, and PoPo watches her disappear before her eyes, singing about how she wishes she could have “1000 more words” with the one she loves.

Nerd Face decides to be the hero and save the day, as well as get the girl he loves, Smize, who he saw having an affair with Kissy Face. What results is a truly existential scene where a phone screen is projected behind the set, showing the actual nerd face emoji traveling to the settings panel to force a factory reset. Meanwhile, Skull is trying to stop him on stage. A well-choreographed fight ensues, resulting in Nerd Face hitting the reset button and bringing back all of the emojis who were infected by the virus. And, he gets the girl.

Skull, played by Jordon Bolden, was a standout. His voice and presence commanded the stage, and he was believably the villain, giving me chills when he sang about wanting his world to end. Laura Nicole Harrison, who played Smize, had an infectious energy. She had me at her first solo number, which discusses how she’s sad on the inside but has to maintain her happy face. Too real.

Emojiland has a lot of heart. The themes it possesses are real and relatable, without taking itself too seriously. The cast oozes talent. And, the opening song, which is reprised in the finale, was stuck in my head for the duration of my train ride home, which I believe to be the mark of a good musical.

It’s not scientific law, but prospects are generally poor for a musical whose eleven o’clock number is delivered by a poop emoji (even when you have someone as belt-tacular as Jessie Alagna playing said Pile of Poo). The fringe benefit of such grim expectations is that Emojiland, directed by Thomas Caruso, breezily surpasses them in the surprise of this year’s New York Musical Festival. Husband-and-wife team Keith and Laura Nicole Harrison not only pair memorable melodies with thoughtful and clever lyrics, but they actually meet their subtitle — “A Texistential New Musical” — with more than just a few passing thoughts on how you can’t judge an emoji by its interface.

We certainly do hear those grievances from Smize (short for Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes, played by Laura Nicole Harrison), a girl who feels stuck in her cheerful demeanor despite her well of complex underlying emotions (she and her fellow emojis are dressed by Sarah Zinn in mercifully subtle homages to their iPhone illustrations). A world that roots itself in fixed identities, however, naturally becomes a world that fears otherness, and we see that fear come to a head when Prince and Princess (self-centered monarchs played by the perfect comic duo of Josh Lamon and Lesli Margherita) scare the residents of Emojiland into supporting the construction of a firewall to prevent future cell phone updates that will bring new and unknown emojis. It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it’s a surprisingly apt one that the authors track all the way to the quarantine of the newest emojis upon suspicion of spreading a virus through Emojiland (you don’t expect an allusion to Japanese internment to make it into a musical comedy, but there you have it).

To supplement the political commentary, the Harrisons have gone philosophical with an overarching thought experiment that pits nihilists against existentialists. Philosophy (and science fiction) buffs have probably heard of the Simulation Hypothesis — the proposition that our entire universe, most likely, is actually a computer simulation. Seeing as our cell-phone-based characters are aware of their origin story, Emojiland skips the what-if and moves on to the what-then — which is by far the more interesting question. Skull (a powerfully voiced Jordon Bolden) is all-too-painfully aware of his artificial existence and decides he would rather have no life at all than a life absent of meaning. On the contrary, Nerd Face (played ever so endearingly by Keith Harrison), appreciates the beauty of his mathematical coding and asserts his own significance in his synthetic cosmos. Call me a Pile of Poo, but Emojiland might inspire the most exciting postshow conversation you’ve had in quite some time.

If you’ve ever wondered about the private lives and inner thoughts of emojis and the impact software updates have on their interpersonal connections and eventual obsolescence, then Emojiland, with book, music and lyrics by Keith Harrison and Laura Nicole Harrison, is the “Texistentialist Musical” for you! Playing in this year’s New York Musical Festival – NYMF’s 15^th anniversary season – the witty ensemble piece (and 2018 Richard Rodgers Award Finalist) gives an anthropomorphized look inside a smartphone at a community of singing and dancing, thinking and feeling digital icons – a roster of emoticons that you use every day on social media, but never really knew. As it turns out, they’re a lot like us.

Backed by a score of live electric music (performed by Justin Ward Weber and Conductor Jonathan Ivie on keyboards, Chris Biesterfeldt on guitar, and Giancarlo De Trizio on drums) and a full-scale projection screen of changing digital images (projection design by Lisa Renkel), an animated ensemble of twelve portrays a microcosm of human experiences, from love and loss, friendship and deceit, to power struggles and discord, sabotage and heroism, encountered by an engaging array of the popular pictographic archetypes. Referencing both classic Shakespeare and a post-modern high-tech vocabulary, the book and lyrics are clever, thought-provoking, and “emojional,” the original music – including a range of vibrant show tunes, romantic ballads, and rap – is lively, expressive, and perfectly-suited to the characters and their moods, and the uplifting moral – that we all matter and “It’s Just So Great To Be Alive” – brings a welcome reminder that when things go wrong, we can always “backspace, backspace, backspace” or hit the reset button.

The terrific cast, directed with high energy, humor, and heart by Thomas Caruso, features the ever-outstanding Lesli Margherita as the Princess, who rules Emojiland with a hilariously camp indifference to the needs of her digital populace and is happy to let them know that “Princess Is a Bitch.” Jordon Bolden turns in a haunting performance as Skull, the purveyor of doom and gloom inspired by the tragic existentialist angst and gravitas of Hamlet; his macabre prologue and stirring vocals (“Cross My Bones” and “Thank Me Now”) are among the highlights of the show. Co-creators Keith and Laura Nicole Harrison appear as Nerd Face (the new brainy emoji and expert techie whose knowledge of “Zeroes and Ones” is unsurpassed) and Smize (with a smiley face and smiling eyes on the outside, but “Sad on the Inside”) – the central simpatico pair that might get a second chance at connecting if only he can save the program from the destructive virus that would make it freeze and crash.

Rounding out the ensemble are Jessie Alagna, Brandon L. Armstrong, Chloe Fox, Cooper Howell, Megan Kane, Alex G. Kunz, Josh Lamon, and Angela Wildflower (whose heartfelt rendition of “A Thousand More Words” lauds the importance of eloquent language and direct communication in our increasingly post-lingual digital culture). Each and every one is consistently excellent, delivering the distinctive and funny emoji characterizations, spot-on harmonies, powerful solos, and spirited choreography (by Kenny Ingram). They are supported by an eye-catching design, with a backdrop panel depicting a computer memory board and movable light boxes that change colors with the story’s events and emotions (scenic design by David Goldstein); flat props made from computer print-outs (by Anthony Freitas); amusing costumes (Sarah Zinn) and makeup (Chloe Fox) that identify the familiar emoticons; and lighting (Jamie Roderick) and sound (Ken Goodwin) that evoke the workings of a smartphone.

Emojiland is an irresistible and ingenious musical for our digital age, with universal themes that connect us all – whether human or computer-generated – through time and space, and through the big question of being. It will keep you laughing and leave you thinking.