Theater Review: Without Gosling or geese, Broadway’s ‘The Notebook’ goes for the guts, without guile

The romantic tearjerker “The Notebook” lands on Broadway in awkward musical theater form this spring having previously conquered books and movies

The romantic tearjerker “The Notebook” lands on Broadway in awkward musical theater form this spring having previously conquered books and movies. It is intent now on making a live audience openly weep by employing massive doses of schlocky sentimentality without the aid of Ryan Gosling.

The bombastic musical that opened Thursday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre is about a love for the ages but has understated songs by Ingrid Michaelson, who offers coffee house vibes instead of passion’s thunder. The book by Bekah Brunstetter loses gas well before it’s over and piles on the melodrama.

This adaptation from a Nicholas Sparks novel is the love story of poor boy Noah Calhoun and rich girl Allie Hamilton, told as the elderly narrator reads the story to his elderly wife with Alzheimer’s, the two later revealed to be the young couple of the story, whose passion was interrupted by meddling parents.

For the stage, three sets of multicultural Noahs and Allies have been hired for different stages — there’s inflation even on Broadway — so that at some points there are six people on stage representing our central couple, a somewhat diffusing effect. Luckily, the boys are dressed in brown and the girls in blue, like in kindergarten. It’s a bad sign when your Broadway musical needs color cues to distinguish the cast.

Directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams as well as choreographer Katie Spelman seem to complicate the visuals by rushing everyone around in a breathless whirl, saying, in effect, that what love really does is make you want to sprint.

The multicultural cast has prompted the setting to change from the 1930s and ’40s to the ’60s and ’70s (you can tell because of the Diane von Furstenberg-like wrap dresses) and away from South Carolina to “a coastal town in the mid-Atlantic,” robbing it of specificity.

Perhaps that’s why scenic work by David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis is so odd. It’s the first hybrid hospital-boating dock design seen on Broadway in quite a while and hopefully the last. There’s a pool of real water there, and every once in a while, a pilon or a boat hull, juxtaposed with a neon Exit sign and chilly hospital decor.

Such jarring touches overshadow a lovely attempt to show the evolution of Noah’s renovated old house, his goal to winning Allie back. It is first referenced in abstract pieces — a window here, a porch there — until it comes together as real when she finally calls it home. Like a sea turtle.

Lighting designer Ben Stanton has hung neon tubes vertically, trying to bridge the difference between fluorescent office lights and stars, and failing. Adding to the show’s way-too-muchness is the sound effect of a ticking clock. A messy Act 1 finale leads to the unwelcome sight of Act 2 beginning with a comatose patient, so don’t rush back from the bar.