The Lonely Few, 26 May 2024

Even though there is nothing unpredictable or surprising in the story of The Lonely Few, seeing a love story between queer women unabashedly celebrated on stage with the same pulsing, rock and roll energy of a typical “boy meets girl” plot, left me feeling energized fulfilled. A tight musical one act, The Lonely Few examines different ways queer women (who of course, happen to be literal rock stars) live their lives. For Lila (Lauren Patten), nothing supersedes family, while the object of her affection, Amy (Taylor Iman Jones) would rather cut people out and move on. Amy’s confidence is the perfect foil to Lila’s awkwardness, and their undeniable stage chemistry is powerful to behold. Though both profoundly lonely, music is a different kind of escape for each of them– Lila finds confidence on stage with her band, while Amy uses her music as an excuse to keep running from her problems and her pain. In the end, Lila runs towards her problems in the face of Amy’s unfair ultimatum asking Lila to commit to staying with her in an unstable situation when Lila’s brother is in crisis. 

As electric as she was on stage, I lost my respect for Amy. Perhaps because it was told in a single act, I didn’t feel that anything existed between Lila and Amy beyond the beginnings of a connection that to me had a hollow “love at first sight” feel to it. The material we were given, told mostly through lighting and staging as Amy and Lila looked at each other, didn’t smack of a real, genuine connection. To me, this seemed like the story of Lila’s first relationship/sexual partner, perhaps a partner who would fuel future song writing, but maybe not someone who shared her priorities and lifestyle goals. Lila had lived a small town life and had no exposure to other queer women. She used the Amy, possibly the first queer woman she’d known, as a way to get herself out, and, even though she was certainly smitten and it felt to her like real love, I felt in Patten’s portrayal a resounding truth of the difficulty of being queer– sometimes we cling to the person we have found because it’s so difficult to find someone that we overlook serious incompatibility so to have someone and not be alone. 

The more I think about it, the more Lila and Amy’s relationship feels like an intoxication that took them both out of their loneliness for a little while, at least physically. But Amy’s disregard for the other people Lila loved and Lila’s comfortability completely abandoning Amy without saying goodbye knowing that Amy had abandonment issues really felt like philosophical differences in how loved ones should be treated. I can’t help but wonder how that would have played out between Lila and Amy in a post-honeymoon part of this relationship dynamic. Of course, at the end, Lila and Amy reunite and promise to stay together. Lila’s band breaks up, her brother is going to get help for his alcoholism, and everybody is moving on to some vaguely defined universal concept of whatever’s next. 

Though it was truly joyous to watch an unapologetic lesbian love story, I felt that some of these nuances were lost on the audience– either that or I projected them from my own life. In terms of plot and detail, writers Zoe Sarnak and Rachel Bonds did not give us much of anything. They deliberately leaned into telling an everywoman story. On the positive side, it was incredibly relatable. I saw myself in these songs; I might even go as far as to say I injected myself into them to flesh out the vagaries with the details these stories brought up for me. But on the negative side, it was incredibly superficial. There were moments where I celebrated that, and moments where I lamented it. Truthfully, the whole show felt like exposition. I didn’t know the characters much better after seeing it. The details I could give were about their origins, not their personalities. Even as I write this, I find myself wondering who these women really were outside of their sexualities. I also did not feel that the other characters in the show were given much to work with– they kind of felt like set pieces to complete a look and a vibe most of the time– in other words, they were functional props with incredible voices and no real depth.

It is always a pleasure to see Tony award winning actress Lauren Patten on stage, and it’s thrilling to see someone like Taylor Iman Jones really match (and even rival) Patten’s incredible vocal and acting talent. At the end of the day, I got what I came for. The Lonely Few delivered an incredible night that celebrated queer women being able to have the same kind of love stories that everyone else does without the story containing over bigotry or pain beyond the loneliness of being queer and occasionally feeling stuck. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, if not a terribly profound one.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.