STAGE WEST: "The Family Album" at La Jolla Playhouse

Left to right: Siblings Daniel (Marc delaCruz), Mia (Aury Krebs) and Charlotte (Courtney Reed) in "The Family Album" at La Jolla Playhouse.                                                                        Photo by Rich Soublet II

            A “family album” might sound anachronistic. For one, digital photography has made those dusty, often-leather-bound collections of family pictures all but obsolete. For another, digital audio streaming services have made the term “album,” as in an artist’s collection of songs, sound like a throwback term at best.
            But just maybe the creators of the new musical “The Family Album” thought about this and wanted to make a point: that images of our own families exist in our minds and in our hearts, if not necessarily in leather-bound books; that songs too, especially those inspired by the people we love (or struggle to love) also reside in our hearts and minds.
            Those creators of the La Jolla Playhouse-commissioned “The Family Album” are composers MILCK (Connie K. Kim) and AG (Adrianne Gonzalez), book writer Sam Chanse and director Jess McLeod. Their extended one-act musical (it should have been two) is world-premiering in the Playhouse’s Potiker Theatre.
            The attraction of “The Family Album” is in its essential relatability. Who among us hasn’t felt a disconnect with our dysfunctional family? Who hasn’t sought common ground with a sibling, or more often with a parent, and sometimes discovered it in a shared pain? Who doesn’t want to be free but also yearns to belong?
            These are universal questions but familiar ones. Sincere and imaginatively staged as it is, “The Family Album” doesn’t feel as if it breaks any new thematic or narrative ground. Family members keeping secrets. Sibling rivalries and resentment. Deep-seated mother/daughter conflict. Been there, sung that?
            But there are nuances here. Daughter Mia (Aury Krebs) is a singer-songwriter with one obscure album under her belt, toiling from gig to gig and dreaming of the big time. This avocation quite naturally functions with a stage musical. Mia can not only show us her talent but she can express her feelings about the family from which  she is distant if not completely estranged, especially her mother Sylvia (Jodi Long). Then there’s Mia’s inner id, from which literally springs a quartet of tall, menacing costumed cat figures whenever she’s feeling angry or overwhelmed. (Didn’t I see them at Comic-Con?)
            Mia’s is an Asian-American immigrant family with high expectations for itself and for each other. With her brother Daniel (Marc delaCruz) a rising hedge-fund manager and her sister Charlotte (Courtney Reed) a dermatologist and mom, Mia is convinced she’s viewed as the underachiever, the family flop. Her parents, chiefly her mother, are more interested in Mia’s getting married (which she isn’t) than in her career making music, which is regarded as a phase.
            Yet after foreshadowing what’s to come in the show’s opening number “No Home At All,” Mia rushes to the family hearth when informed in a terse phone call from her sister that “Mom’s dying.”
            Let the mind games begin.
            Not only is Mom not dying, but she’s up on her feet vacuuming the living room, her one arm in a sling, when Mia arrives. “Struck down by a bicycle,” daughter is told. This seems as unlikely as the “she’s dying” message, and so it will be.
            From there ensues much uncomfortable feeling-out among the family with everyone on edge. There are moments of lightness in between as when the sisters “salute” do-no-wrong (should we say goodie-goodie?) brother Daniel in “Golden Child.”
            But the appearance of a Young Mia (Claire Kwon through Aug. 8, and then Kendyl Sayuri Yokoyama) escalates the tension between Mia and her mother. The Young Mia’s presence is a stark reminder of an abuse from a boy suffered at the age of 14, one for which she was shamed by her mother and never given comfort or understanding.
            Young Mia will remain a presence throughout much of “The Family Album,” even duetting with her grown-up counterpart on among others the rousing “Dopamine Lottery.” The recurring inclusion onstage of her younger self seems a misstep, minimizing the power of Young Mia’s initial appearance. I’d have brought her back just for the revealing ending of “The Family Album” but otherwise left the adult Mia to reflect on her past in solo song. Musicians do it all the time.
            “The Family Album” score by MILCK and AG is 24-songs strong, some of them too short and many of them of the expository kind. An exception is Daniel’s personal “Restless,” and a clever novelty, the back-and-forth texting number, “Dot Dot Dot Deleting,” between Daniel and Charlotte.
There are a couple of treasures: the inward-looking “Quiet,” which the composers actually wrote a decade ago and which became a musical affirmation of the ensuing Women’s March in Washington, D.C.; and “Oh, Mother,” an urgent, heartfelt finale that looks to bring peace to Mia, to her mother, to Mia’s past and present.
            The interpersonal, familial conflicts of “The Family Album” are more crucial than Mia’s career aspirations (a lesson she has to learn herself). Though one of the most entertaining scenes in the show is when a couple of industry execs from Tectonic Records (I don’t know whether this was meant to be fictitious or the actual dubstep label from the UK, though I suspect the former) try to entice Mia to sign with them with an audacious, image-reshaping campaign (“New Fucking Direction”). Quick! Call forth Mia’s id cats!
            Aury Krebs is a very winning protagonist with a versatile, expressive voice. Her younger self, Kwon, more than holds her own. Long evokes many indomitable mothers out there, making Sylvia’s acknowledgements of her own pain and her missteps as a parent more raw and real. This is a small but stellar cast, which also features Paul Nakauchi as Mia’s father, that has great appeal.
            From stage right, a band led by music director Michael Sobie captures the emotive highs and lows of the score; also enhancing the musical sequences are Justin Stasiw’s sound design and lighting design by Amanda Zieve, whose work was so integral to the Playhouse’s techy production of “The Heart” a year ago.
            “The Family Album” runs through Aug. 23 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Hughes and Sheila Potiker Theatre on the UCSD campus.