Music’s Charms Work Again

It takes more than drug cocktails to fight AIDS. Humor, courage, compassion and companionship have also proven to be powerful weapons.

For the couple who wrote “The Last Session,” music, too, would have to be included on that list. Steve Schalchlin was weak from battling the disease when he found new strength in writing songs about it. His longtime partner, Jim Brochu, urged him on and, in time, saw a way to weave the songs into a story.

The resulting musical drew enthusiastic response in New York, where it ran off-off-Broadway and then off-Broadway for nine months. Now the North Hollywood couple are welcoming the show home, as Brochu directs its West Coast premiere at the Laguna Playhouse’s Moulton Theater in Laguna Beach.

Written from the heart, Schalchlin’s gospel-tinged pop songs exert a rare emotional pull. Again and again, a fierce drive overtakes the tunes’ melancholic strains. It is life catching hold again, hope rising on powerful wings.

The story’s setting allows the songs to emerge out of the action realistically. A semi-famous singer-songwriter named Gideon (Bob Stillman) has reserved a studio for what he expects to be his last recording session. The latest AIDS miracle drug has failed him, and he is tiring in his struggle against the disease. Unknown to all but one of the friends who will gather to help him record his songs, he plans to commit suicide the next day.

Along with the songs, Gideon records a running commentary that he addresses to his lover of 13 years, who is temporarily out of town. Gideon plans to kill himself before the lover’s return.

Soon, the other vocalists begin to arrive: Tryshia (Michele Mais), a powerhouse who only half-jokingly refers to herself as “the diva,” and Vicki (Amy Coleman), a gravelly voiced hellion who was once Gideon’s wife.

As everyone’s long history together erupts into fierce--if ultimately harmless--skirmishes, Jim (P.M. Howard), the recording engineer and another longtime friend, adds his own barbs over the intercom.

Another singer and friend can’t be there, however, and so a young unknown is on his way to audition as a fill-in.

Buddy (Joel Traywick) arrives eager as a puppy to meet Gideon. Steeped in evangelical religion, Buddy has been singing on the gospel circuit and is a big fan of the religious music from early in Gideon’s career. But when Buddy realizes that Gideon is gay, disgust and betrayal mix in his voice as he insists that a person can’t be both Christian and homosexual.

Their debate on this topic becomes one of the show’s central themes. “What if the Lord sent me here to save you?” Buddy asks at one point.

“What if he sent me here to save you?” Gideon shoots back.

Individually, Stillman, Traywick, Mais and Coleman are vocal dynamos; united in harmony, they are heaven on Earth. As they sing such songs as “Connected”--about an AIDS patient who is as eternally connected to his loved ones as to the hospital’s monitors and IVs--the audience joins in with a chorus of sniffles.

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The acting is a joy too. As these friends joust with one another, they deliver some of the most vicious--and screamingly funny--put-downs imaginable. Yet love is everywhere evident: in the gleam in an eye, a hand on a shoulder.

Brochu’s script reserves too much information about Gideon’s background until the second act. Also in Act 2, Brochu and Schalchlin indulge in flights of musical fantasy that emerge out of nowhere and seem jarringly out of place with the other songs.

The whole transcends the minor flaws of its parts, however. By the time the singers declare “You can only lift the darkness when you care,” they have convinced the audience that they are delivering the gospel truth.

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* “The Last Session,” Moulton Theater, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. $31-$38. Ends Oct. 11. (949) 497-2787. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Bob Stillman: Gideon

Amy Coleman: Vicki

Joel Traywick: Buddy

Michele Mais: Tryshia

P.M. Howard: Jim

A Laguna Playhouse production. Music and lyrics by Steve Schalchlin; additional lyrics by John Bettis and Marie Cain; book by Jim Brochu. Directed by Jim Brochu. Set: Don Gruber. Costumes: Dwight Richard Odle. Lights: Paulie Jenkins. Musical supervision: Barry Fasman. Stage manager: Alice Harkins.