Found
Opening Night: October 14, 2014
Closing: November 9, 2014
Theater: Atlantic Theater
Found was created from scores of surprising and eccentric discarded notes and letters that have been “found” in the real world by every-day people. Inspired by actual events, the show follows Davy who, along with his two best friends, is lost and broke. When he finds a strangely revealing note on his windshield meant for someone else, it sparks an outlandish idea that finds him and his compatriots on a wild, comedic journey. This raucous and insightful new musical tells a story of ambition, betrayal and loyalty while celebrating the weirdness in all of us.
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October 15, 2014
Serendipity and missed connections are the stuff of many a musical comedy, and they’re put to clever use in the fact-based chamber musical Found, playing at Off Broadway’s Atlantic Theater Company through Nov. 9. A decade ago, Chicago native Davy Rothbart began collecting discarded letters, lists, posters, mash notes, break-up letters, etc., and started publishing them in a zine that led to a popular live-reading tour and NPR gigs. It’s too bad that the show’s conceit isn’t matched by the plot, a twentysomething love triangle wrapped up in a meta-narrative about the creation of Rothbart’s Found Magazine brand. The book is by Hunter Bell, co-creator of another meta-musical, title of show, and Lee Overtree, a co-founder of Story Pirates who also directs the production. What we get is an overlong, utterly predictable story about Davy (Godspell‘s Nick Blaemire) founding his zine, launching a reading tour with his partner in crime and unrequited love (Heathers‘ Barrett Wilbert Weed), and then heading to L.A. with a pretty aspiring TV producer (Betsy Morgan) to see if he can transform Found into a slightly higher-brow version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. (Spoiler alert: He can’t.)
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October 14, 2014
New musicals not based on movies are rare. And ones with the originality and infectious exuberance of Found are even more uncommon. The show is based on the Found magazines and books by Davy Rothbart, who saw discarded letters, to-do lists and other scraps of paper littering streets as windows into people’s lives. These fragmented, out-of-context messages are cleverly woven into a sweetly compelling musical about discovering one’s place in the world. The book by Hunter Bell and Lee Overtree, who also directs, traces the rise of Found (an angry note to a suspected cheater sparked it), its attempts to grow into a TV show and fallout from that expansion. Eli Bolin’s lively and lovely songs — a moody mix of acoustic-driven ballads and tunes with jazzier edges — keep the action humming. David Korins’ evocative set, forged from tossed-away notes, makes an ideal setting.
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October 14, 2014
The endearing new musical Found is literally scrappy: It’s organized around messages found on real-life notes, signs and other misplaced or discarded missives, as collected by Davy Rothbart in a magazine he has published sporadically since 2001. These scribbles offer glimpses into other people’s minds—funny, angry, weird, poignant—and have been organized into a paper trail for the plot of Found to follow. Nick Blaemire, sweet and bouncy as a gum ball, plays a fictionalized version of Davy; Barrett Wilbert Weed (in excellent voice) and Daniel Everidge are the decent-hearted roommates who help him follow his dream, and Betsy Morgan is the producer who tempts him to Hollywood. Six tip-top actors, including Community’s Danny Pudi and the limber Andrew Call, play dozens of side characters and bump up the energy with choreography, by Monica Bill Barnes, that adorably evokes real people dancing.
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October 14, 2014
Forget texting and Tumblr: The ebullient new musical Found is a throwback to the good old days when reminders were scribbled on scraps of paper, kiss-offs on Post-Its, excuses on the backs of envelopes. Those days aren’t that far off, actually — the show is inspired by Found magazine, which has been collecting and compiling this ephemera since 2001. All the notes used in the production are real, adding a welcome edge of surreal authenticity to what could have been a mere gimmick. Put together by Hunter Bell (a co-author of [title of show]) and Lee Overtree, who also directed, with a score by Eli Bolin, Found is an ode to serendipity — finding connections via random pieces of paper. Unsurprisingly, that makes it the best date-night show of the season: Who doesn’t want to believe in chancing on the right thing, or the right someone?
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October 15, 2014
After watching Found, you may want to scurry home and incinerate the following: leftover to-do lists, sarcastic notes on the refrigerator demanding that spouse do dishes, quickly scribbled life plans, attempts at blank verse made after taking Ambien. Should you fail to do so, be warned that these bits of written detritus may not be safe from posterity, as this engaging oddball of a new musical attests. Found, which opened on Tuesday night at the Atlantic Theater Company, derives its title and much of its text from the magazine of the same name, which publishes collections of such writings. (“You have to make up your mind Mr. Dickens, ’twas either the best of times or the worst of times; it could scarcely be both.”) Davy Rothbart, the founder of Found, the magazine, is basically the principal character, and the musical, with a book by Hunter Bell and Lee Overtree, and music and lyrics by Eli Bolin, tells the (semi-fictionalized) story of the “Eureka!” moment of the magazine’s birth and, eventually, its near-death by success.
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