What’s tougher in the music business — making magic in the recording studio, or making magic in the recording studio a second time?
That question forces Will Butler into a guttural cackle.
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Butler’s own band, the famed indie rock group Arcade Fire, lived in Montreal, miles away from the big industry players and famed recording studios. Despite that, pressure still hovered over the Grammy-winning band, threatening their self-contained creative bubble.
“You could tell there was a monster lurking just off-screen,” said Butler, who left the band in 2021.
That monster is one Butler revisited when signing on to create the music for a fictional band that buckles under the immense pressure of expectations in “Stereophonic.” The play earned a record 13 Tony nominations in 2024, winning five, including best play, and best featured actor (Menlo Park’s Will Brill) among other awards. Now the show is making a national tour stop at the Curran Theatre, co-presented by American Conservatory Theater and BroadwaySF. It runs through Nov. 23.
Set in 1976 in a recording studio in Sausalito (where the famed Record Plant was located), the play centers on a fictional, unnamed rock band that sets out to record their sophomore album, trying to capture lightning in a bottle a second time. But it’s not easy, with band members dealing with backstabbing, side deals, addiction, depression, infidelity and greed.
The production is not a musical, but a play with music, as well as an unflinching look at the cost of making art and maintaining relevance in the ever-changing world of public opinion. The show’s storyline has been oft-compared to Fleetwood Mac’s legendary turmoil-fueled studio environment while making the 1977 megahit album “Rumours.” Author David Adjmi stated that several rock bands of that era influenced the story, but that didn’t stop Fleetwood Mac producer Ken Caillat from suing Adjmi and producers of “Stereophonic” for lifting scenes from his and co-author Steven Stiefel’s memoir “Making Rumours.” The suit that was settled in December.
Butler could be forgiven for confusing the fictional play with a documentary. While the story may be considered a work of fiction, there’s no denying the realities of working toward expectations that are no longer yours. No matter how difficult it is to keep outside pressures at bay, expectations from fans, music executives and fellow bandmates can push anyone to their breaking point.
“In the play, you have the pressure building up outside, but they’re just trying to make a record for its own sake,” said Butler, who was born in Truckee. “It’s not like they’re trying to make a hit, but they’re just trying to make something insanely good; they have the resources to do it, and it’s kind of driving them mad.”
The Bay Area-set show is a homecoming for Benicia native Cornelius McMoyler, who plays the band’s British dysfunctional co-founder and tempo-challenged drummer Simon. For McMoyler, diving into a play that really investigates the minutiae of making music on astronomical levels is a fascinating entity. It is a style of theater that makes perfect sense, given today’s never-ending voyeurism.
“If we’ve grown to love anything over the past few years, it’s reality television and documentaries as a culture, really seeing how the sausage gets made,” McMoyler said. “It’s harder to do that in theater, but (director Daniel Aukin) has such a really specific vision about the style of the scenes and the staging. People have said it before, it’s a very inside-baseball, fly-on-the-wall experience and audiences just seem to be really fascinated by that.”
That fascination can be applied to great albums of many bands. McMoyler’s acknowledgement of classic recordings from iconic supergroups such as The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, and The Beatles come with the intrigue of learning how that genius was manifested. It’s a curiosity that “Stereophonic” leans into.
“For audiences, watching people try and put it all together, rehearse a song over and over again, or change a song in real time and then slow it all down making it even better is fascinating,” McMoyler said.
Reaching the heights that Arcade Fire has reached, which includes a Best Album Grammy in 2011 for “The Suburbs,” has made Butler’s first foray into commercial theater both extremely special and intensely personal to this region.
“The play isn’t overly political, but there is something so profound about the American West and about San Francisco, something about looking over the ocean on the edge of the continent,” Butler said. “In this not-totally-post-hippie Bay Area, there is something so gorgeous and genuinely beautiful with little bits of poisonous seeds happening to this band and their music.”
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.bsky.social.
‘STEREOPHONIC’
By David Adjmi, presented by American Conservatory Theater and BroadwaySF
Through: Nov. 23
Where: Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco
Running time: 3 hours, with an intermission
Tickets: $62.01-$193.05; broadwaysf.com
