Reunions
Two Stories of Revisiting Set to Music Off-Broadway
By: Victor Cordell - Nov 17, 2025
Thanks to the producers of Reunions represented by public relations firm Keith Sherman & Associates for their generous provision of press tickets for members attending the American Theatre Critics Association Conference.
Although there are exceptions like the works of O’Henry and Guy de Maupassant, short-form fiction is a largely overlooked genre, lacking the depth and dimensionality of longer works, and presumably easier for a dilettante to accomplish. Yet many of these small masterful works distill a single insight into a crystalline gem.
A challenge in the performing arts is how to present such works. Jeffrey Scharf has adapted two early 20th century works, a short story by Scotsman J.M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame and a short play by the Spanish Quintero Brothers that share a common thread. The addition of musical numbers results in a very delightful and still short, no-intermission evening of entertainment.
The first piece is a parlor room drama, while the second takes place on a park bench. Since both venues are highly focused, each benefits from its performance space which is an intimate, audience-level thrust stage at New York City Center in the Broadway district. Creator Scharf was also fortunate to attract a complete cast with strong Broadway credentials, so the acting and singing are both of the highest order.
The larger piece is Barrie’s The Twelve-Pound Look, which benefits from appealing costumery and a skeletal set suggestive of life in the manor. We meet the frivolous, self-centered Harry Sims. A highly ambitious and successful commoner who has recently been selected for knighthood, he obsesses about getting the ceremony right and insists that his wife Emmy participate in his rehearsals. An apt Bryan Fenkart preens like a self-indulgent peacock, but we quickly find that his determination extends to his unqualified dominion over his put-upon, but still accepting wife, played by Courtney Reed who in this show escapes being typecast as a sexpot.
The spanner in the works is that unbeknownst to either side, the typist, Kate, who is brought in to type Harry’s thank you letters for the congratulations he receives is none other than his first wife who had abandoned him. The dynamics of their relationship are revealed in the duet “You Might Have Been Lady Sims,” and the eloquent disclosure in her solo “I Had to Give Us Up,” in which Chilina Kennedy displays her outstanding voice that complements her fine acting.
Harry admits that he hired detectives to find “the other man” and is crestfallen to hear that Kate simply needed to get away from his overbearing nature and did so as soon as she’d saved ?12 to buy a typewriter and thus her independence. The crux of the play is: Will Emmy also adopt The Twelve Pound Look?
In the shorter, second act, A Sunny Morning, the elderly Don Gonsalvo holds to the tradition of going to a bench in the park that he considers his on every sunny day. Furious that others are seated there one day, he is forced to share another bench with an attractive elderly lady. Gonsalvo is portrayed by the highly accomplished Chip Zien, who possesses both a booming speaking and singing voice. The woman is Dona Laura, played by an equally decorated and talented counterpart, Joanna Glushak.
Each of these older characters recognizes the other as a lover from decades before but doesn’t think the other realizes their past connection. Each ruefully reflects on the curse of age and hesitates to voice the revelation, regretful of how the attractiveness of youth has abandoned them and the expected disappointment by the other. How will this conundrum resolve? I’ll never tell.
Like all literary mashups, the two stories don’t fit like an original and its sequel, but the theme of finding someone anew who was known years before is a common one. That linkage, plus fine acting and a score that adds richness to the narratives, make for fine fare.
Reunions with book and lyrics by Jeffrey Scharf and music by Jimmy Calire, is based on the short stories The Twelve-Pound Look by J.M. Barrie and A Sunny Morning by Serafin Alvarez Quintero and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero, plays at City Center Stage II, New York, New York.