Be More Chill (musical)

Be More Chill is an original musical with music and lyrics by Joe Iconis and a book by Joe Tracz, based on the novel Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini. The musical ran during 2015 at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey.^[1][2]

Synopsis

Act One

After the overture (“Jeremy’s Theme”), the musical begins with an ordinary day in the life of Jeremy Heere, a high school junior in suburban New Jersey. He heads off to school, tries to avoid interacting with his peers, and meets up with his best (and only) friend Michael Mell at lunch. While pining after his crush Christine Canigula, Jeremy decides to sign up for the school play in an attempt to get closer to her. He laments his status as a social outcast, and begs for someone to teach him how to be cool (“More Than Survive”). At rehearsal that afternoon, Jeremy strikes up a conversation with Christine, who tells him about her love of the stage (“I Love Play Rehearsal”). After rehearsal, while attempting to wash graffiti off of his backpack, Jeremy runs into school bully Rich Goranski. Instead of harassing him, Rich instead tells Jeremy about how he learned to be more self-confident and improve his social standing— after a pathetic freshman year, Rich took a pill called a “super quantum unit intel processor,” or “SQUIP.” The SQUIP is a supercomputer that implants itself in the host’s brain and tells them how to act cool, and Rich tells Jeremy that he should get one (“The SQUIP Song”).

As the two friends play video games that night, Jeremy confides in Michael about his conversation with Rich. Michael is skeptical of the SQUIP and reassures Jeremy that he will always think Jeremy is cool and that they will always be friends, but the two of them decide to visit Rich’s dealer at the Payless ShoeSource in the Menlo Park Mall (“Two Player Game”). Jeremy purchases a SQUIP from the dealer, a scary stockboy, and takes it with Mountain Dew as instructed. Not feeling the effects immediately, Jeremy runs into Christine on a date with Jake Dillinger, one of their castmates in the play, right when the SQUIP activates (“The SQUIP Enters”).

The SQUIP immediately sizes up Jeremy and tells him that it will change everything about him— his looks, personality, social standing, because as it stands now, Jeremy is utterly pathetic (“Be More Chill [Pt. 1]”). While buying a new shirt at the SQUIP’s command, he runs into two of the popular girls from school, Brooke Lohst and Chloe Valentine, who offer him a ride home from the mall (“Do You Wanna Ride?”). Ignoring the SQUIP’s insistence that he take them up on the offer, Jeremy declines and leaves to find Micheal— only to find that Michael has left the mall without him. Seeing what happened when he ignored the SQUIP, Jeremy breaks and vows to become more obedient (“Be More Chill [Pt. 2]”). Realizing that he is grateful to have someone helping him out, Jeremy heads to school in the morning with renewed confidence (“More Than Survive [Reprise]”).

At play practice that afternoon, Christine is snubbed by Jake (who has quit the play), and the students begin to rehearse their zombie-apocalypse-set version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. During a break, Christine and Jeremy talk. Christine tells Jeremy about her feelings for a guy she knows— while Jeremy initially believes she is talking about him, Christine is actually talking about Jake (“A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into”). After practice, Jeremy’s SQUIP informs him that Christine won’t consider dating him until his social standing improves drastically. The SQUIP encourages Jeremy to meet up with Brooke (who is clearly interested in him) to use as a stepping stone to popularity, while purposefully ignoring Michael, who the SQUIP views as a link to “Jeremy 1.0” (“Upgrade”).

Act Two

Act Two begins a few weeks later at Jake’s Halloween party, where the cast sing about their desire to get wasted and party all night long (“Halloween”). Jeremy, in a cyborg costume, arrives and meets Brooke, who is dressed as a sexy dog. Jealous of Brooke, Chloe (dressed as a sexy baby) takes Jeremy to an upstairs bedroom and tries to seduce him. While Jeremy is clearly not interested, the SQUIP does not let him resist and makes him kiss her (“Do You Wanna Hang?”) The SQUIP suddenly begins trying to warn Jeremy of something, but it can only speak Japanese, a side effect of Jeremy’s alcohol consumption. Jake discovers Chloe (his ex) and Jeremy and explodes with anger, chasing them off.

Jeremy runs into a bathroom to escape and finds Michael (who he can now see him due to his dysfunctional SQUIP), furious at Jeremy’s abandonment of him. Michael says that he has attempted to research the SQUIP and warns Jeremy about how dangerous it is— Michael’s friend’s older brother took one and while it improved his life for a little while, he landed in a mental hospital after “[going] crazy trying to get it out!” Jeremy, thinking that Michael is just jealous of his newfound popularity, storms out, calling him a loser. Michael locks himself in the bathroom and mourns the loss of his friendship with Jeremy, culminating in a full-blown panic attack (“Michael in the Bathroom”).

Chloe and Jake have reunited, leaving their dates (Jeremy and Christine) to commiserate in their terrible nights in the living room. Rich searches for Mountain Dew Red, becoming increasingly desperate. The SQUIP, once again functional now that Jeremy has sobered up, reappears and demands that Jeremy leave the party immediately.

The next morning, school gossip Jenna Rolan texts everyone with the news: Jake’s house burned down in a fire during the party— a fire set by Rich —and both of them are in the hospital. The news spreads like wildfire throughout the student body (“The Smartphone Hour [Rich Set a Fire]”). Jeremy asks his SQUIP if it had known that there would be a fire. The SQUIP evades the question, instead revealing its master plan— to put SQUIPS in the entire student body (“The Pitiful Children”), starting with Jeremy’s castmates in the play.

At home, Jeremy is confronted by his father. Mr. Heere wants to know why Jeremy’s personality has changed so drastically. Jeremy reprimands his father for acting like he cares, when Mr. Heere’s entire life has been on pause since he and Jeremy’s mother divorced, to the point where Mr. Heere does not even put on pants anymore. Jeremy storms out, and, shaken by his son’s words, Mr. Heere realizes that something is wrong, and that he must take charge and help his son. He tracks down Michael and the two of them head to the school to talk to Jeremy (“The Pants Song”).

Meanwhile at the school, the play is beginning. Backstage, Jeremy confesses his feelings to Christine and tells her about the SQUIP. Christine tells Jeremy that she doesn’t need a pill to figure out life for her and storms off. Mr. Reyes, the play’s director, brings out a prop— a beaker of Mountain Dew, with SQUIP pills already inside of it. Jeremy suddenly realizes that the entire cast, including Mr. Reyes, has been squipped without realizing it. Jeremy’s SQUIP tells him that “[it’s] going to improve [Jeremy’s] life, even if [it has] to take over the entire student body to do it!” Jeremy suddenly remember’s Rich’s frantic search for Mountain Dew Red at the party, and realizes what it means— regular green Mountain Dew activates a SQUIP, and Mountain Dew Red shuts it off. Michael suddenly appears, holding a bottle of Mountain Dew Red. A battle ensues as Jeremy and Michael try to make everyone drink the Mountain Dew to shut off their SQUIPS (“The Play”).

Jeremy wakes up in the hospital after the play, in the same room as Rich. Rich, in the absence of his SQUIP, has realized that he never really needed it, and he can’t wait for the world to get to know the real him once he recovers— nerdy, lisping, and openly bisexual. Mr. Heere and Michael arrive to visit Jeremy. Jeremy gets advice on how to ask Christine out on a real date and realizes that he will always have voices in his head, but it is up to him to ensure that his own voice— keeping him true to himself — must be the loudest (“Voices in My Head”).

Roles and original cast

Musical numbers

Recording

An original cast album was recorded on July 21, 2015 and released later that year.

Differences between book and musical

The musical shares a premise and characters with the book, but there are several major changes.

• Several characters from the book do not appear, or are at least not named. Brooke, Jenna, and Chloe take on some traits of Stephanie, Anne, and Katrina (the popular girls in the novel who do not appear in the musical). Michael's girlfriend Nicole, a minor character in the book, does not appear at all.
• Jeremy's parents are not divorced in the novel.
• The Halloween dance and Jake's house party, separate events in the book, are combined in the musical.
• The musical implies that the only reason Jeremy signs up for the play is to get close to Christine. He has substantial theater experience in the novel, and hanging out with Christine is an added bonus.
• The SQUIP, while it can be cruel to Jeremy in the book, is not an outright villain.
• In the musical, one of Michael's friends has an older brother whose SQUIP drove him insane. In the book, it is Michael himself whose brother's SQUIP made him have a nervous breakdown.
• The ending of the musical is completely different from that of the novel. In the novel, the SQUIP convinces Jeremy to stop the play and confess his love to Christine out-of-character, as a show of unity after the fire, convinced that it will work. When the plan fails, the SQUIP realizes that it cannot be of any further service to Jeremy and tells him how to shut it off. The book itself is a final "gift" from the SQUIP to Jeremy-- a log of all of his actions and thought processes, so that Jeremy can attempt to make amends with Christine and show his actions were not wholly his own. In the musical, the SQUIP devised a plot to give everyone SQUIP's, and a large part of the second is dedicated to attempting to deactivate it. Also, at the end of the musical Jeremy asks Christine out, and she accepts.
• Michael Mell's character in the novel is white, while the one in the musical is of color.

References

1. ↑ Isherwood, Charles (2015-06-09). "Review: In ‘Be More Chill,’ a Nerd Finds Popularity in a Sci-Fi Pill". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-05-10. 
2. ↑ "'Be More Chill' opens at Two River Theater". NJ.com. Retrieved 2017-05-10.