Once

New York Theatre Workshop

(212) 279-4200

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Though Once is based on a movie, the show proves to be a powerful reminder of theater’s “singular capacity to enchant and transport us,” said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. Enda Walsh’s adaptation improves on the 2006 hit Irish film, “expanding its emotional breadth and elevating it stylistically” while retaining the appealing fragility of its love story. The two leads, still named merely Guy (Steve Kazee) and Girl (Cristin Milioti), meet cute in Dublin and, while singing and playing some “emotionally ravishing” original music together, fall in love without acting on their emotions. Director John Tiffany stages their brief romance with such precision and thoughtfulness that “even the scene changes pack visual poetry.”

Not everything translates well to the stage, said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. In the film, the “understated naturalness of the performances” kept the story from veering into cutesy romcom territory, but subtlety “has never been considered an asset in musicals.” That might be why Walsh took Girl, a forthright Czech immigrant, more fully into “kooky,” pixie dream-girl territory and transformed Guy “from a shaggy nerd” into “a figure of leading-man handsomeness.” Fortunately, “a merciful reversal occurs when Once breaks into music,” as the too-adorable characters acquire the depth and mystery that they lack when delivering their spoken lines.

In the end, “it’s impossible not to feel the love,” said Adam Green in Vogue.com. Even when the script “falls into the traps of cliché, over-explanation,” and forced whimsy, the show overall has a less-is-more aesthetic that’s “almost cinematic.” Likewise, the “soulful Kazee and the elfin, wide-eyed Milioti” have irresistible charm, and when they play and sing together, she on piano and he on guitar, they prove so well matched that “it sends shivers through the audience.” Even though Guy and Girl part “without ever having even kissed,” your sense is that “they’ve done something just as intimate.”