Spoiler-free review:
Rating out of 10: Although I concede this round to Dave Malloy’s capacity to write both a pointed original story and write music and lyrics well: 6 and ½, which is on me this time, not the work itself.
Likes: acting choices, textual and musical character choices, set design, as a whole, how intentionally a bit unsettling it is, until the end.
Critiques: It is not an issue of cowardice so much as a far too keen awareness of something. We need more art in all manner of art and in everything challenging; however, in the case of Dave Malloy’s Octet, its observations are so pointed and well-made that it hurts. I hope someday we actually do learn from works like these and others, but, as of now, it is barely allegorical anymore.
Spoiler review:
“You fool, it’s all within yourself.” – Octet: the musical (XI. Beautiful)
Octet: the musical by Dave Malloy, first premiered off Broadway on May 19, 2019 and ran until June 30th of that year. It was well received by the New York Press, including in 2019, and whilst many musicals from the 2010s and before have aged with far less grace. Octet has barely aged at all, for better and worse. In-universe inspirations, including but not limited to Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by journalist Jon Ronson, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, The God Delusion by sociologist and anthropologist Richard Dawkins, A Chorus Line, Company by Stephen Sondheim, Black Mirror (TV), The Matrix (Film), and arguably one of its most important repeated symbols and motifs is the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. Octet: the musical is incredibly human, following a group of (internet) addicts struggling with various degrees of ostracization, dehumanization, the mob of the worldwide web, and, most fascinating to me, the limitations of empathy in other people and the immaterial nature of knowledge. Indeed, as Plato observed and wrote down in the allegory of the cave in his work The Republic (380-360 BCE) that mankind even in a state of claiming to ‘know’ are still subject to the shadows on the walls of the cave, such is the state of cultural and moral relativism and a world absent of any divine figures or godly persons. Octet explores this to a point that, although it is rather sharp, even for me. As a large point of credit to Dave Malloy, he observed and wrote as he saw. I wish more people could see this show and listen to its cast recording, as, unfortunately, we have not changed, and we realize less and less the state of our ignorance, not aided by information overload and willful misinformation and disinformation.
“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” – Octavia E. Butler
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