The Heart is a world premiere musical currently running at La Jolla Playhouse. Kim’s and I are members of La Jolla Playhouse and attend most performances. It is as close to Broadway as you can get on the west coast and we regularly see shows that should and sometimes do go on to Broadway since this is one of the main feeder theaters for the Great White Way. This nickname for Broadway comes from the bright white lights that illuminate the Broadway theaters and surrounding area. The term dates back to the early 1900s when Broadway became famous for its brilliant electric lighting. The white lights from theater marquees, billboards, and street lamps created a distinctive bright corridor through Times Square and the Theater District. It was considered revolutionary lighting technology at the time. Broadway represents the pinnacle of American commercial theater and is home to major musicals and plays that often define popular culture. A symbol of “making it” in show business – performing on Broadway – is considered the ultimate achievement for many theater performers. Kim plied those waters for over thirty years while I was a mere bystander that occasionally took in a show. Kim’s specialty is musical theater, so that’s what we both tend to like the most. I credit Kim for helping me find the pleasure in that special artform and now I enjoy it so much that if a show we go to see at La Jolla Playhouse is anything but a musical, I am disappointed.
The Heart is a very unique musical that follows a donor heart’s journey over 24 suspenseful hours in San Diego. The play explores what happens when a young San Diego surfer’s life is cut short from a traffic accident following a “dawn-patrol” surfing expedition that feeds his passion. The story revolves around the tragic loss of a vital young life and the process of using that tragedy to consider organ donation to give life extension to others like by giving a second chance to a stranger who needs a heart transplant. The themes of organ donation and medical ethics are very delicate. The story examines the pressure on parents to decide whether to donate their son’s organs moments after discovering he’s in an unrecoverable coma. We learn of the urgency of that process at a moment when human processing time is otherwise most needed. The story told by the nine-person cast delves into the complex issue of human interconnectedness at several levels. There are the parents, who are divorced but share the love of their now lost child. There are the medical care-givers who tend to the mostly inanimate body of the donor who may have left the world, but who’s body is a stark reminder of who he was and perhaps still is. It’s about the network of donor agents that optimize the use of human necessarily emotionally detached “spare parts” that are suddenly available to the growing community of people who wait patiently, but somewhat hopelessly, for the opportunity to extend or improve their lives by being randomly fortunate enough to seize an opportunity that has come about from human tragedy. And this all has to happen in lightning speed with minimal time for contemplation in any direction. And it is very much a story about what we owe our fellow human beings, even those we may never met before this fateful and life-changing moment. That moment of generosity and hope is about as dramatic and pathos-filled as any moment that we humans can craft.
The play takes place in a 22-foot square with all real-time action, featuring a cast of nine actors who embody more than 40 characters . It features a unique, fast-paced and thrilling electronic score that is engineered and animated from a high-tech console just off-stage and very visible to the audience. The music is thereby made a direct part of the drama. The other important element of the show is the lighting (we actually met the lighting director as we were leaving the theater). This non-traditional set is lighted with overhead blue LED bands that give it a distinctly modern medical feel as though you were in a high-tech hospital. The moveable consoles with their data-rich screens that are familiar in look but foreign in content make you feel that there is a lot of detail to organ transplanting that we mere mortals cannot grasp in a 90-minute show and for which the dedicated medical professionals spend a decade or more mastering. And then there is the magnificent digital maxi-screen backdrop to the whole stage. It abstractly but very evocatively gives the audience the feel for the ocean with its powerful and constant wave action that is being surfed and the beating, three-dimensional heart being transplanted. This is done in a monochromatic way that is both beautiful and understandable in its simplicity.
The show is based on the highly acclaimed French novel “Réparer les Vivants” by Maylis de Kerangal and is directed by Tony Award-winning director Christopher Ashley. Ashley has noted that the timing of the show feels especially relevant, calling it “a great time in history to tell a story about generosity and about taking care of each other” during what he describes as a fractured moment in society. That poignancy is not lost on the audience and Kim and I suspect that the overall topic of caring and the very specific topic of extreme medical intervention is highly relatable to many people in today’s world.
We are all walking around feeling wounded by the brutality the world is choosing to champion these days. Insurrections, deportations, armed intervention in daily life, fear of cancellation, disruption to a long-held way of life, dispassionate self-centeredness, reactionary intransigence, multilateral social divisiveness and growing intolerance for anything and everyone that is different, all weigh heavily on us. Add to that the aging and relentless debilitations we and our loved ones must address each day, and you understand why The Heart has so much relevance.
On the drive home from La Jolla, a lovely and upscale coastal community that epitomizes what most people think of when they hear San Diego, we passed the Scripps Memorial Hospital where Kim’s brother Jeff will soon go for a month to receive a stem cell transplant to address his leukemia. Jeff has suffered from Leukemia for probably six years though he has probably only been treated for it for five. He has gone through a series of debilitating and costly chemotherapy protocols, both traditional and experimental, and while he has had some success, the leukemia has prevailed and not gone away. This stem cell transplant is considered the last best hope for a cure and like so many things in life, it seems to have a rather stark bi-modal outcome. He has been told that there is, for his age (he is considered old for this treatment at 72), a 60% chance of complete success as opposed to a 40% chance of complete failure. There seems very little in between. At this point, those odds are acceptable to him.
It was an emotional evening for Kim because she naturally was drawn to thoughts of her brother and what he faces in the next month, and I’m sure that thought process extended on beyond that for all those she loves as well as herself. In the show, there is a song where the transplant recipient sings to her family with a tinge of humor that “nobody gets out alive” from the game of life. At our age, there truly is a mathematical reality we all must face. Time becomes relative and how we use it and embrace it matters more than its absolute duration. Every moment gets more and more precious and every moment is a life affirmation.