‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Is a Robo-Musical with a Beating Heart

Do androids dream of their human owners? It’s a question that’s implicitly posed in Will Aronson and Hue Park’s musical Maybe Happy Ending (2016), and one you may find yourself pondering long after seeing this searingly beautiful production. Recently transferred to Broadway after a successful run in Seoul, the show begins as a meet-cute between two retired Helperbots in 2064, but unfolds into a subtle, dusk-lit meditation about loneliness and the ache of impermanence.

The protagonists of this entrancing story are Oliver (Darren Criss) and Claire (Helen J. Shen), discarded robots living in Helperbot Yards on the outskirts of Seoul. Little about Oliver’s immaculate appearance suggests that he’s not long for this world. As he confides to his houseplant HwaBoon (the closest thing he has to a soulmate), it’s only a matter of time before he is reunited with his former owner, James (Marcus Choi). He fills his days with small rituals: reading Jazz Monthly, tending to HwaBoon, listening to records by the fictional 20th-century crooner Gil Brentley (a suave Dez Duron) and embarking on secret midnight excursions. His routine is disturbed when Claire, a newer but faltering Helperbot, knocks on his door to borrow his charger. He reluctantly agrees, disparaging her model’s shortcomings: ‘The Helperbot Five series runs out of battery really quickly. It’s also less durable.’ Eventually, however, the two become friends.

The robots’ few worldly possessions and modest aspirations are all contained inside their micro-apartments, reminiscent of Korean gosiwon housing. Oliver’s room is clean as a whistle and utilitarian, while Claire’s cotton-candy pink haven is dominated by a body-swallowing pouffe. Struggling with a malfunctioning charger, Claire petitions for a replacement battery, only to be met with a monotone AI response: ‘Helperbot Five replacement parts are still discontinued.’ Her only option is to keep borrowing Oliver’s charger. Already, I’ve slid into anthropomorphizing robots, but Maybe Happy Ending makes the question of what pronouns to use feel oddly academic, if not moot. It’s easy enough to see ourselves reflected in the gleaming surfaces of the set, while the robots’ problems feel pressingly, existentially human. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, Oliver and Claire show us that it could also be its own form of obsessive hope.

What starts as a transactional relationship quickly evolves into an impulsive road trip. Financing the journey with coins secretly collected from recycling bottles, Oliver finally plans to visit James, who now resides on Jeju Island. His softly delivered admission – ‘If I stopped working for him, I’d have no purpose’ – is among the show’s most heartbreaking moments. Claire, who still lacks a working charger, offers to drive Oliver, who has not been programmed with this particular skill, in her car: a perk of her more advanced model.

A series of flashbacks, projected onto a screen at the rear of the stage, transports us from black and white glimpses of the robots’ past owners to idyllic locations, such as Jeju and a firefly-filled forest. In one quixotic moment, Claire wonders if she might learn how to charge herself from the luminous creatures. Criss and Shen bring life to their characters with extraordinary skill: Criss imbues Oliver with a stilted charm and an almost melancholic rigidity, while Shen’s fluid gestures and dry wit reflect Claire’s more advanced programming. Under Michael Arden’s nuanced direction, their chemistry evolves in small but memorable beats that feel curiously analogue: a touch to the temple to transmit memories, a dance lesson, a parallel gaze from a ferry.

Musically, Maybe Happy Ending eschews the futuristic sounds you might expect from a story about robots set several years into the future. Instead, Park and Aronson create a warm aural palette dominated by piano and strings. Two songs, ‘The Way That It Has To Be’ and ‘When You’re in Love’, with their light-as-helium, iridescent soap-bubble notes, are especially earwormy, evoking the feeling of proleptic mourning.

While the play has its comedic moments – the robots’ emergency stop at a roadside love motel is a highlight – the musical’s emotional core lies in its poignant depiction of the undertow of nostalgia, as well as the quotidian experiences that make up a life. As Oliver and Claire share memories, we glimpse not only their pasts but the lives of the humans they once served. Their existence, tethered to the memories of their owners, feels eerily akin to our own reliance on digital protheses. In one sequence, Claire’s former owner chats with a boyfriend (an ‘auxiliary user’) about their relationship and whether they are really in love. (Titles for some segments are displayed in Korean characters as supertitles next to their English translations.) In another scene, Claire accesses Oliver’s memories while he’s asleep. Watching them, you half believe that robots dream not like humans but as swifts, shutting off only half of their brain while resting.

The Helperbots, though programmed with password-protected limits and designed to become obsolete after a certain number of years, still yearn for connection. When Oliver describes fireflies as ‘little forest robots’ with only two months to live, the metaphor is clear but not overwrought. In an era of spectacle-driven theatre that lately has seemed to favour overly gimmicky works about generative AI, Maybe Happy Ending is a humane exception: a robo-musical that grants its characters what the American writer Grace Paley described in ‘A Conversation with my Father’ (1972) as ‘the open destiny of life’.

Maybe Happy Ending is playing at the Belasco Theatre in New York until 7 September.