Why Love: Exploring Connection and What it Means to be Human in Maybe Happy Ending
One unexpected bonus of living on the East Coast has been being able to get down to New York City for the occasional Broadway show.
My best friend and I have the two-day trip to New York City to see a show down to an exact science at this point. We were lucky a few weeks ago to make the trip to the city to see Maybe Happy Ending, a new musical that opened on Broadway last year.
I expected to be entertained and to enjoy a new Broadway musical. I didn’t expect to be crying over a pair of robots in what ended up being an unexpectedly moving experience.
The show, which first debuted in South Korea in 2016, follows two retired robots, Oliver and Claire, who are living in a robot retirement village in the not-too-distant future. Oliver and Claire are Helperbots, designed to look like humans and assist their owners with whatever tasks they might need help with.
When we join them in the show, they’ve both been retired for a while, living across the hall from each other but never interacting. Oliver prefers the company of his houseplant, HwaBoon, and jazz record collection — both gifts from his owner James, who Oliver is sure will be back any day now to pick him up and take him home. Claire is under no illusions about her relationship with her previous owner — she knows her days as a Helperbot are through — and is focused instead on extending her waning battery life and enjoying the time she has left.
We soon learn that both Helperbots are quickly on their way to being totally obsolete — calculating and counting down their remaining days till there will no longer be any replacement parts or easy fixes and they’ll have to shut down permanently.
When Claire knocks on Oliver’s door to borrow his charger, we’re soon off with the two Helperbots and Oliver’s house plant HwaBoon on one last adventure — a robot road trip to locate Oliver’s long-lost owner, fulfill one of Claire’s last wishes to see a firefly in real life, and watch Claire and Oliver unexpectedly fall in love.
While the story and music are cute — I’ve seen it compared to a Pixar film on stage — the show is also deeply moving and engaging. It made me think about so many questions related to our humanity, our memory, and our capacity to connect with one another.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to love and connect with one another? And is loving each other worth the pain and loss that comes along with that or is it better to be alone?
Both Claire and Oliver initially butt heads, not used to the company after so many years alone. Claire even has a whole number in the show about how hard it is to not be alone. But later in the show, we hear Claire and Oliver lament, “When you’re in love, you’re the loneliest.”
And ultimately they’re forced to make a choice — enjoy the time they have left together, even if being together comes with its own difficulties and pain, or erase their memories and forget their relationship ever happened.
This brings up another central question of the show: How should we use and enjoy the short time we have in this life?
As robots, Claire and Oliver have the blessing and the curse of knowing exactly how much time they have left before they must permanently shut down. So, they know that they only have a limited time together almost down to the day.
In exploring this question, the show sends a strong message about using the time we have wisely and using that time to connect with the ones we love. I wish I could say more but I don’t want to risk spoiling the musical’s poignant ending. Suffice to say that Claire and Oliver make a clear choice that connection and love are what matter the most.
#######
Green Street in Black and White: A Chicago Story
New from Reformed Journal Books
Order yours from Bookshop.com
Read David Crumm’s comments
4 Responses
“What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to love and connect with one another? And is loving each other worth the pain and loss that comes along with that or is it better to be alone?”
Thank you, Allison for this dramatic reminder of our deep human need to be lovingly connected to each other. Denominational and national upheavals tell us that we are still not very good at it.
Thanks for drawing out the philosophical and theological insights of a Broadway show — not the first place one would look for them. For another creative reflection on what it means to be human and how it is different from being humanoid, I recommend Kazuo Ishiguru’s 2021 novel, Klara and the Sun, whose narrator and main character is an “artificial friend,” similar to the new show’s “helperbots.” In this and some of his earlier novels (Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go) Ishiguru “engages profound theological questions while avoiding any appeal to religious language or tradition” (a quote from my review in Christian Century, 5/18/2022).
Thank you for this review! I’m heading to NYC this week to spend Mother’s Day with my adult kids and we have tickets to Maybe Happy Ending. Between your article, the Tony nominations, and seeing fellow UofM alum Darren Criss, I’m really looking forward to the show!
The show is all you say. We were surprised at the catch you off guard, soul searching and deep beauty of the show. A creative work of art in the true sense.