Review: This Is Not a Drill, A Musical About the Mistaken Hawaiian Missile Phone Alert

Remember those 38 harrowing minutes in 2018 when people in Hawaii believed there was a ballistic missile en route after receiving an errant emergency phone alert? Holly Doubet sure does. She was on vacation in Hawaii at the time, and she, along with co-book writer Joseph McDonough and co-songwriters Kathy Babylon and John Vester have now musicalized the experience in This Is Not a Drill at the York Theatre Company.

The first scene, as each party of tourists arrive, touting their own relationship problems, could be the setup for a new White Lotus season. In White Lotus fashion, the only actual Hawaiians are resort staff. But safe from Mike White’s satirical knifepoint, This Is Not a Drill coddles these visitors with unflinching earnestness, suggesting that the island, even when possibly being bombed, can still offer redemptive healing to lovelorn souls from the continental states. “This is the land of Aloha,” the ensemble intones in the opening number, “Ring of fire as a crown/Azure waters dancing ‘round/Archipelago profound.”

Gabriel Barre’s staging dutifully tries to adjust to the constantly careening tone: a high-octane Les Mis-like sequence with doleful ensemble members wailing “Get your ID so they know who we are” and “Death rides in on a shooting star” immediately follows voiceover impersonations of Trump and Kim Jong Un tweeting back and forth threatening nuclear attack. But Barre’s cast puts on a master class in transcending material.

Jessica (Felicia Finley) has planned a trip with her aloof husband to Hawaii, but he bails at the last minute, leaving her hurt and suspicious that he’s cheating again. We learn almost nothing else about her for the duration of the show (she also sings a baleful ballad to her children on the phone when she thinks there’s a missile inbound), but Finley’s distinctive, almost-guttural belt, right on the edge between rock and musical theater, suggests churning depths that are nowhere to be found in the script.

In the fallout shelter, tense couple Derek (Gary Edwards) and Sophie (Aurelia Williams) reconcile, despite his unresolved homophobic banishing of their gay son, and they croon a hearty R&B duet: “I will know you with the wisdom of love/I will feel you with emotion so strong.” Edwards and Williams infuse the nonsense lyrics with such persuasive emotion-so-strong that the number becomes a magnetic highlight. (Derek shortly thereafter survives a slow-motion cardiac event, unintentionally the funniest moment of the evening.)

And, doing the most with the least, Matthew Curiano and Chris Doubet share a sweet chemistry as a young couple who have just lost custody of a foster child they’d hoped to adopt. They almost succeed in riding out the tonal waves as their characters veer between melodramatic melancholy and Bacchanalian instincts while celebrating being “Cincinnati Boys” having “a gay ol’ time.”

Even the woefully conceived role of “Anonymous Button Guy,” who offers two illogical solos in which he debates whether to send the alert and then repents having done so, is brought to lively life by Lukas Poost, who’s multiplied through some nifty video work from Brad Peterson and Peter Brucker. (In general, the design elements, including a descending bamboo roof from set designer Edward Pierce and maybe-end-of-the-world lighting effects from Alan C. Edwards, are of a higher quality than most shows at the York have boasted in the past.)

One central cause of This Is Not a Drill’s dramatic limpness is that this, of course, is a drill. And since the audience knows that all along, there’s absolutely no tension or stakes for the 38 minutes that the characters run around in supposed mortal peril. There is far more suspense and pathos in the similar false alarm apocalypse plotline in the SpongeBob SquarePants musical.

Few artists deserve more grace than musical theater writers with a new work in development, trying to keep lyrics, music, story, and choreography from crashing in on each other. There is much to sympathize with in the crafting of this show’s oft-compelling melodies even if they are in service of songs that dramatically fail to launch. And it’s certainly credible that a traumatic incident like this one might make people reconsider their life choices.

But what to make of This Is Not a Drill’s most confounding moments such as when the hotel manager makes her staff sing a hula-esque song called “Happy Thoughts” with the lyrics, “Sunbathing Waikiki, applying sunscreen liberally/You missed a spot on your back/And got sunburned in your crack”? Archipelago profound, indeed.