Todrick Hall’s ‘Midnight’ Chimes Unevenly

Have I got a boundary-crossing love story for you. It arrives in the form of a new musical called “Midnight,” set in the American South during the 19th century, written by and starring Todrick Hall, a veteran of Broadway and reality TV, and as his playbill bio notes, also “known as one of the pioneers of YouTube.” The show’s mission, according to a press release, is to explore “love, identity, empathy, and the humanity that connects us across the boundaries of race, class, and expectation.”This exploration, now under way off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theatre, stretches over two long acts, the second of which features a highly fantastical reversal of circumstance and fortune. Mr. Hall not only provides the music, lyrics, book, and essentially the leading performance, but also serves as the production’s director and choreographer — roles that not even Lin-Manuel Miranda, who juggled all those other tasks for “Hamilton,” assigned himself.“Hamilton” is actually a good reference point for “Midnight,” as Mr. Hall seems to have studied that mega-hit assiduously. In everything from its rhythms and rhymes (mostly sung, with some rapping as well) to its constant movement to its alternately winking and sober nods to history, “Midnight” practically declares itself a successor to Mr. Miranda’s venerated blockbuster. That’s a tall order for a first musical, and if Mr. Hall deserves an A for ambition, “Midnight” does not, unfortunately, offer the sparkling wit, dazzling score, or sheer ingenuity that more than mitigated the self-importance of “Hamilton.” Certainly, Mr. Hall is ten times the musical performer that Mr. Miranda is, an agile, athletic dancer with a supple, fluid singing voice, and he has made the role of Rail, a proud and virtuous slave, a good showcase for both talents.The trouble is that much of “Midnight” feels like just that, a showcase, both for Mr. Hall’s ideals and for the undeniably impressive gifts of his fellow actors, rather than a terribly compelling or even truly provocative story.The songs, which fuse influences ranging from folk and R&B to gospel and classical — sometimes shifting gears to fit stereotypical depictions of the slaves and their cartoonishly stuffy, snooty owners — offer the female cast members enough gratuitous high notes to supply an army of auditioning sopranos. That’s to say nothing of the orgasms of melisma sprinkled liberally through the numbers, some of which would make Mariah Carey dizzy.The show’s message — basically, that racism and homophobia have proven stubborn stains on our national character — is delivered with a similar lack of subtlety, which would have been fine and could have been powerful had Mr. Hall’s approach not been so weighed down by platitudes. With a few exceptions — notable among them a pair of coquettish ingenues, brightly played and sung by Charlotte Odusanya and Kennedy Caughell — the men and women we meet are either noble or evil, even though a key plot twist stresses the malleability of human behavior.“Midnight” is not without flashes of promise and poignance, or pleasure. A significant epiphany shared by Rail and Richard, the most sympathetic of the white characters — played by Jeremy Beloate, previously a finalist on NBC’s “The Voice” — inspires a welcome bit of sassy comic relief that’s heartily managed by the actors cast as older black characters, among them Ayana George and Dwayne Clark. By the final number, which nods so heavily to the one in “Hamilton” that you can see its forehead, Mr. Hall has proven himself a creative and performing artist who is plainly worth watching in the future. At this point, the performer is more developed than the creator, but I look forward to watching both grow.

Todrick Hall’s ‘Midnight’ Chimes Unevenly

Todrick Hall’s ‘Midnight’ Chimes Unevenly

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