David Byrne’s ‘American Utopia’: Theater Review

In the first of several playful ruminations that punctuate his exhilarating theatrical concert, American Utopia, David Byrne holds up a model of the human brain and ponders how the hundreds of millions of neuro connections in a baby’s gray matter get whittled down as we mature into adulthood, discarding the unnecessary and conserving only those needed to define who we are and how we perceive the world. This follows the section-by-section cerebral breakdown of the opening song, “Here.” That combined introduction serves as an implicit challenge to the audience — to rewire our brains, rendering them more elastic, capable of change and of receiving the multifarious signals of this astonishing show on different levels.

Teaming up with a crew of 11 prodigiously talented and hard-working musicians, backup singers and dancers of diverse ages and ethnicities, Byrne gathers a vibrant community onstage, over which he presides as part professor, part preacher, part partying proletarian. The sheer jubilation being transmitted by the performers, not to mention the dynamic staging, seem to demand a new kind of sensory intake. It’s less a concert than a participatory religious experience, honoring the primal pleasures of music, dance and song as collective celebration, a rite to be savored more than ever in dark times.