Ordinary Days is a musical that, as the name suggests, brings out the beauty and the tragedy in the mundane experiences of life. The show follows four New Yorkers as they go about their day through Adam Gwon’s charming music. The two couples in this play, with Claire and Jason’s struggling relationship and Deb and Warren’s more lighthearted friendship storyline, mean that this is a very enjoyable musical with a lot more accessibility than other song cycle composers like Jason Robert Brown, who tend to push the boundaries a little more.

The four characters are played by Chantal Elyse, Ethan Bourke, Lachlan Ceravolo and Jordan Berry, who all bring wonderful performances to this production, with Berry’s performance as Claire being a particular highlight. She showed off an incredible tone and power in her voice throughout the night with real emotion and range, while Ceravolo played an excellent foil, bringing a great deal of humour to his performance while also showing off some excellent movement and vocal chops. Bourke was also fantastic as Warren, bringing humour and an awkward charm to the role with a strong singing voice to back it, while Elyse was also excellent as Deb, showing great presence on stage and superb control of her voice.

This was a very strong cast that made the performance of a challenging song cycle seem easy when it was anything but and they should be commended for an outstanding execution of this show, which captured the emotion and peaks and troughs of Gwon’s writing and translated them well to the Flight Path Theatre stage. Joseph O’Reilly was also excellent on the piano which played such a critical role in this show and he supported the cast very well. 

The set very much felt like a pastiche of New York, which was a nice touch. Often with song cycles, the acting and the production can sometimes be neglected but it definitely did not feel that way in this show. While Gwon’s writing is quite pretty, it is also quite simple, with many of the songs following the same arc and style and there was not very much of a plot to this show at all. The cast did what they could with the material but it did ultimately become a little repetitive at times by virtue of Gwon’s writing.

That said, the show felt tight, and the added staging and excellent choreography meant that interest was well maintained throughout the show. The cast brought out the excellence of some of the hit songs from the show, like “I’ll Be Here” and “Favourite Places”, and it was clear that the audience really enjoyed their time in the theatre as this was an excellent show overall with a strong cast.

Overall, this production took Adam Gwon’s work to a new level, bringing a depth and passion to it that is absolutely to be commended. The staging was wonderful and all the production elements were fantastic, with the only limitation really being Gwon’s writing and some of the repetition within the show. This is a superb production of four up-and-coming performers and one can be certain that they will do some great things in the future.

Rating: ★★★★

Ordinary Days played at the Flight Path Theatre until 9 May. For more information, click here. 

All photo credits: Andrea Magpulong