ORDINARY DAYS: 83% Sweet – UPDATED

Deborah S. Craig, left, who plays Deb, and Nick Gabriel, who plays Warren in Ordinary Day. Photography by: Jamie Rector.

SWEET
The lesson: Simple joys have a way of secretly expanding. If you go into “Ordinary Days” with reasonable expectations, you’ll likely come out feeling as if you’ve just had an experience that was more than a little special.
Charles McNulty – LA Times

BITTERSWEET
Though meant to be ironic because it is a story of New York City, which, of course, is always extraordinary, the title is actually prophetic about Adam Gwon’s light, predictable pop-musical “ode to New York,” which only occasionally rises above the ordinary.
Tom Provenzano – LA Weekly

SWEET
The lives of four ordinary New Yorkers intersect in Adam Gwon’s tuneful, touching new musical Ordinary Days, now getting a sensationally performed, directed, and designed West Coast Premiere at South Coast Repertory.
Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA

BITTERSWEET
Ordinary Days, however, feels like Brown-lite. Nothing about the piece’s West Coast premiere at South Coast Repertory suggests that the composer has a Parade in him. Not that director Ethan McSweeny and his quartet of actors aren’t hammering away at this anything-but-breezy tale, trying perhaps to up the material’s importance quotient. There’s a hard, exclamation point-like feel to the production, particularly whenever anybody has to bring home a keen or a ballad. That’s both good and bad news for actors Deborah S. Craig, Nancy Anderson, David Burnham and Nick Gabriel whose characters do have names but are better defined as, respectively, Type A Neurotic, Commitmentphobe, Lovelorn and Dreamer.
Evan Henerson – CurtainUp

SWEET
Even at the 80 minutes running time, we’re taken on a circuitous path to the upshot. But when it finally comes, it’s as potent as those of the iconic musicals in which art is a metaphor for everything right with life, or in which New York is a metaphor for everything wrong with life.
Dany Margolies – Backstage

BITTERSWEET
Adam Gwon’s modestly charming chamber tuner “Ordinary Days,” now at South Coast Rep, keeps sending its four ordinary New Yorkers to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to confront the gap between their dreamed-for “big picture” canvas, musically described as “The fairy tale ending … Something they shoot for/That sets them apart,” and the tiny pointillist realities of their ordinary days. Helmer Ethan McSweeny’s framing of these portraits is alternately accomplished and shaky, but Gwon’s brushstrokes mark him as a talent to watch.
Bob Verini – Variety

BITTER
So how come this reviewer felt so unsatisfied? Well first of all 30ish angst about living in New York has little relevance to the lives of people in Southern California. The story is about two couples, the first played by Anderson and Burnham, your average couple with issues about commitment. We find out at the end of the piece that Anderson’s character was previously married to someone killed in the collapse of the towers on 9/11. A very moving song but it feels stuck on because we never get to really care about this neurotic couple. The main emphasis of their story seems to be hearing David Burnham hit all those high notes; he sings well but after awhile I was only listening to these blasts of power at the top of his range.
Robert Machray – Stagehappenings

SWEET
At the end of the night, Ordinary Days was absolutely worth the drive. Adam Gwon captures shining, evanescent moments in the lives of these NYers that genuinely resonate with a contemporary audience. As Deb and Warren sit in Starbucks, sipping lukewarm tea and sharing their “big pictures” in life, I couldn’t help but be pulled into my own stock memories of similar coffee shop conversations with friends. At its most utopian, the musical sparks the imagination and opens up space for dreaming.
Sarah Taylor Ellis – Compositions on Theatre

SWEET
Put four outstanding actors on that stage under Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz’s spectacular light design; place Dennis Castellano at the piano; throw in Jason Thompson’s terrific urban video projections, and Voila! The magic of theater takes place before your eyes.
Shirle Gottlieb – Stagehappenings