T: An MBTA Musical
The Rockwell
255 Elm St.
Somerville, Mass.
Dec. 1, 2023
Loving to hate the absurd incompetence of the T is a time-honored Boston tradition as old as the train itself. The cathartic experience of venting about the T (a nickname for the MBTA, or “Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority,” for any non-Bostonians) is a bonding and a uniting force of frustration in a diverse city, as easy to spark a conversation with as talking about the weather.
T: An MBTA Musical proudly carries on this tradition. It opens with the classic 1940s song “Charlie on the M.T.A,” which tells the tale of Charlie (whose face still appears on the transit “CharlieCards”), a man stuck on Boston’s subway system, unable to pay the exit fares to leave the train. At the Dec. 1st performance, a gray-suited, fedora-clad Charlie (Robbie Gold) strolled into a lonely spotlight with a guitar to sing his solo, eventually taking on a character role in the larger musical, which was accompanied by a live on-stage band.
The musical began in 2011 at Improv Boston with a book by Mike Manship and music and lyrics by Melissa Carubia. Since then, it has been periodically brought back and updated to reference all the latest frustrations with the T. The play has one final showing this year on Dec. 17 at The Rockwell in Somerville.
At a 21+ venue with tickets priced at $32 for general admission, it felt like the 9:30 p.m. start time was a bit past the audience’s bedtime. But the waiting crowd was jostled awake by an upbeat transit-themed playlist, as well as actors posing as MBTA police in yellow highlighter vests and aviator glasses and handing out tickets for various offenses. (“You left your umbrella on the seats and got everyone’s butts wet… and not in the fun way!”)
This interactive bent carried through into other aspects of the performance. MBTA employees got special seating. “On the train” tickets allowed patrons to sit on the stage. Fr an extra $3, theater-goers could play a subway passenger hunt on their way up the red line to the theater.
Despite the show’s scripted and rehearsed nature, it managed to retain the fun, spontaneous, and boundary-breaking spirit of its improv roots, and the initmate black box theater space in The Rockwell accentuated its unpretentious, experimental feel.
The play follows three Bostonians, loosely representing the red, green, and orange lines: Michelle (Emily Lambert), Alice (Arielle Kaplan), John (Joe Dreeszen), respectively. Their lives have been derailed by the MBTA in various ways. They discover a secret map that holds the key to defeating the MBTA and leads them on a scavenger hunt across the city and into various run-ins with MBTA authorities.
The plot is a little convoluted and at times hard to follow with quickly-rattled riddles and clues. But it feels appropriately auxiliary to the larger point of the musical, which is an irreverent romp and an excuse to fit in as many clever, bantering jabs at the T as possible, which it does in spectacular form.
Accompanied by the use of screeching train sounds and overhead announcements, there are all the expected jabs: Frat bros get on at Kenmore. Tourists mispronounce Worcester. Entitled passengers take up too many seats with their bags. The slowness of the T is a perpetual complaint. In one of my favorite moments of the show, fellow passengers are swapped out with skeletons as the heroes read all of Don Quixote while traveling just a few stops.
The overdrawn, Stooge-like train cops and MBTA employees stole the show with their absurdity and unabashed villainy. They sang rousing choruses of “Fuck you” in surround sound, complete with evil cackles and howling, and wiped fake tears away with their middle fingers as the characters complained.
“Our job is quite simple, to crush the spirit of the people!” delighted an Monopoly Man-esque MBTA general manager “…of the month!” surround sound. Played by Ray O’Hare on Dec. 1, this was one of the most deliciously over-the-top performances of the night.
Parts of the play felt as though they hadn’t aged well since when they presumably premiered in 2011. Michelle, for example, laments at being forced into the role of “the queen of one-night stands,” due to the fact that the bars close after the train stops running. (“Guess I’ll never find love because the T makes me a whore,” she sings, as a chorus echoes “such a skank ho, now you know!”) John, a potential love interest, attempts to flirt with her by prying to see a video on her phone but the result feels a little aggressive. Nevertheless, Michelle holds her own by the end, and the play falls short of being truly problematic.
It might have also been possible to make the argument that the play could come across as a jab against Boston in general, and simply the complaints of the transplants watching the show and a few fake Boston accents on stage, except for the fact that it clearly struck a chord with no one more than the actual MBTA employees “on the train” at the front of the theater. The watching employees delightedly flashed their badges, laughed harder than anyone else in the audience, and gave callbacks, which (while admittedly fairly disruptive) ultimately only aided the musical’s wild, irreverent spirit.
This is not a Broadway musical, and it’s not trying to be. It delights in its glorious camp. When vocals wavered, the cast leaned into them with over-exaggerated guttural screams and purposefully bad singing for a laugh. At one point kazoos overtook the stage. The unhinged choreography didn’t take itself too seriously, and punchlines were embedded even in serious, plot-driving moments. The cast brought a contagious, over-the-top energy.
The result was the live creation of a world in which it felt like anything could happen. The show felt from the community of the community and for the community; I was relieved that it let humor drive the train, so to speak.
All in all it was a great night, unless you had to take the T back home.
