“Maybe Happy Ending”
Fisher Theatre
Detroit, Mich.
Through Nov. 1
It feels kind of weird to get emotionally invested in machines. But the robot romance musical “Maybe Happy Ending” brought all the feels when the national tour touched down in Detroit this week, delivering a charming, beautiful, and often gut-wrenching story that explores the joy and pain of love. The show, with music composed by Will Aronson and lyrics and book written by Aronson and Hue Park, was nominated for 10 Tony Awards in 2025, winning six, including Best Musical.
Set in a futuristic South Korea, where the show originated, the musical follows the story of human-like helper robots Oliver and Claire. The two live in a retirement home for discarded robots, where they’re meant to idle until they become so obsolete they can no longer be repaired.
Uptight, jazz-loving Oliver does not realize he has been retired, waiting years for his father-like owner to come retrieve him. Laid-back Claire — struggling with something like a terminal illness as her battery begins to die — is jaded by her harsher knowledge of the world and her own painful discarding. Each situation is heartbreaking on its own, even amid the quirky banter between the two. They set off on an adventure that brings them deeper into the human experience — for better and for worse.
Steven Huynh and Claire Kwon are strong as Oliver and Claire, respectively. Huynh, in particular, captured a perfect balance of human mannerisms paired with just enough stiffness and naiveté to hint at his non-human insides. The music is solid, though nothing left me humming as I left the theater. Many songs are jazzy — an interesting contrast for a show about machines — with especially lovely vocals from crooner Francisco Javier González.
The musical’s high-tech set and effects, designed by Dane Laffrey, Ben Stanton, and George Reeve, are some of its strongest elements — fitting for a futuristic show about robots. Dark projection screens frequently zoom in and out within scenes, creating a window around the performers, framed by thin, neon-lit borders. Impressive projection mapping produces digital flashbacks to the robots’ histories, at times creating dialogue between the live and digital actors. An all-encompassing firefly projection — accompanied by a live, onstage piano and strings ensemble — creates one of the most beautiful settings for a romantic scene I’ve seen in musical theater.
Questioning whether love is worth its often-painful price is no novelty when it comes to art. But what separates “Maybe Happy Ending” from a film with similar themes, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” is its technological element that adds a modern relevance amid the growing complications of human relationships with artificial intelligence. While their parts are small, there are real human characters in “Maybe Happy Ending,” and those humans struggle with complicated emotions they feel toward the robotic helpers. It reminds me of the lonely humans in today’s world who are finding companionship with interactive robots and even full-on love stories with AI chatbots — the feelings are real, even if the affection isn’t returned.
So what is a happy ending? Are the emotional highs worth the emotional lows? Is one possible without the other? Maybe.
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