Josh Lamon & Lesli Magherita In ‘Emojiland’ photo credit Jeremy Daniel
Emojiland is one of the 15 shows in the 2018 New York Musical Festival running through July and early August. With a book, music, and lyrics by the husband/wife team of Keith Harrison and Laura Nicole Harrison, Emojiland gives a whole new appreciation for the symbols known as emjois on your cellphone. The setting for the show is an imaginary digital world inside a smartphone. Add to that some fine music and few more subplots and you have a show that is basically a fantasy, but it brings in some contemporary political issues as well.
Thomas Caruso provides direction for Emojiland. Inspired by The Unicode® Standard, Emojiland advertises as a “Textistential Musical.” It is a very enjoyable show to see. It does create a fantasy world filled with emojis that people use everyday on their smartphones.This may sound a little strange to say, but it almost seems like you know these characters as they appear on stage! These characters take on human characteristics and no longer are they symbols; they represent people or things that come to life.
A Word About Technology
The stage is set with a screen backdrop which uses all kinds of dynamic graphics on it. The graphics are especially enjoyable to see what it might look like to the emojis inside their imaginary world. A powerful use of the screen occurs when emojis are deleted and they disappear from the screen.
The Story
The story deals with everyone (or everything?) preparing for an update. None of the emojis quite knows their fate or who might come in as version 5.0 comes on board. As the installation happens, fantastic things occur onstage including a song, “The Progress Bar/Update” and flashes on the backdrop screen. A new character, Prince, is part of the 5.0. He takes away the power Princess enjoyed up until then. They bicker and finally realize they can share but want to avoid anything else threatening them in future updates. They issue a command to build a wall to protect the land from any new emojis coming in.
As the wall is built, Skull has a plan to end the emoji land. He enlists Nerd Face to help him launch a virus. The emojis do everyday things like go to work, prepare meals and fall in love. As a result, it is rather sad to watch as an emoji is deleted because of the virus; that’s how real these characters become.
The Cast and Characters
Lesli Margherita as Princess and Josh Lamon as Prince battle it out for who is the leader of the land. A love triangle is created by Keith Harrison as Nerd Face, Laura Nicole Harrison as Smize and Cooper Howell as Smiling Face with Sunglasses. Jordon Bolden as Skull works to destroy the emoji world by introducing a virus. Angela Wildflower as Police Officer falls in love with Megan Kane as Construction Worker. Jessie Alagna gets many laughs as Pile of Poo as does Brandon L. Armstrong who plays Guardsman. Chloe Fox serves as a narrator playing Information Desk. Playing one of the most unique character names is Alex G, Kunz as Man in Business Suit Levitating.
Music
Music is under the direction of Jonathan Ivie. Some of the songs are about particular characters such as when Smize sings “Sad on the Inside.” Although her face is constantly smiling, she sings about feelings she has inside of her that are sad and don’t match that outside; but she realizes there is nothing much she can do about it. The songs for Skull are very impressive especially “Thank Me Now” where he sings about getting out of the way they are living. There are several ballads including “A Thousand More Words” where Police Officer sings beautifully of her love for Construction Worker that is outstanding. Full company numbers are very well done especially “Stand For” about building a wall to keep others out.
Final Thoughts
Emojiland has a lot of good things going for it that show promise for its future. New York Musical Festival genre billing for the show is Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Politics. For a show that runs just about 2 hours, that is a lot to cover, maybe too much. The political aspect about building the wall takes too long to show up. It also gets lost in the second act as the virus takes over. Some rework in that area will help this show move on. The time just seems so right for it.