Charlie is obsessing over the end of the world. Or maybe just her world. It’s hard to tell in Nick Blaemire’s musical Soon, which follows her mental anguish over the course of four months sequestered in her East Village apartment.
One can hardly blame Charlie (Ava Delaney) for self-quarantining. A barrage of tightly edited video clips alludes to the planet’s inevitable self-destruction, despite the happy-go-lucky musings of her archetypal gay roommate, Steven (Mike Millan), who takes advantage of 95-degree weather in December to head to the Hamptons with his boyfriend.
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Writer-composer Nick Blaemire began writing Soon in 2010, but unlike Marjorie Prime, an AI kitchen-sink drama that arrived on Broadway a decade after its premiere with even more relevance, Soon feels stuck in its own time warp.
“This is not an easy time to be alive,” says Charlie’s mother (Mylinda Hull), who appears in stylized sequences, usually with a cocktail in her hand. “Then again, it never is.”
Then there’s Jonah (Oliver Richman), the grocery delivery guy who falls for Charlie the moment she opens the door, smitten by her melancholy beauty despite the emotional walls she erects as if she’s building a fallout shelter. Blaemire eventually throws a curveball when Charlie receives a potentially life-threatening medical diagnosis, which offers some clarity around the strained relationship with her mother.
The musical, under Will Blum’s direction, rarely moves beyond the lethargic pacing of its central couple, and one wonders what breakthrough Jonah hopes to achieve by smothering the emotionally distant Charlie with affection.
Under-amplified vocals, even in the intimate Loft at St. Luke’s Theatre, get swallowed, which may be just as well when Steven and Jonah join forces to bar mitzvah the apartment goldfish.
Soon grapples with both the existential and practical side of dying. But its perspective on living rarely resonates emotionally. Even the fish wants out.
Is ‘Soon’ worth seeing?
Nick Blaemire’s musical Soon builds a promising doomsday premise inside an East Village walk-up, but like its central character, it rarely finds the will to get up off the couch.
- The Loft at St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 W. 46th Street, 3rd floor, New York City
- Notable performers: Ava Delaney, Oliver Richman, Mylinda Hull, Mike Millan
- Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
- Performances through November 8, 2026
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