By Kimberly Rau
Wilbury Group starts its 2025-2026 season in a way that seems completely in line with the company’s vibe: the world premiere of an outside-the-box local work, written and performed by Providence-area artists.
“From Here to Where,” which Wilbury describes as “part lyrical sermon, part political exorcism, and part late-night jam session,” is a one-act musical with a book by artist Umberto Crenca and music by The Gillen Street Ensemble.
The show was conceived around the Ensemble’s weekly dinners and jam sessions at Crenca’s home, a converted Italian-American club. And the set looks like what you’d expect from a basement that holds so much passion and music: There’s mood lighting. Instruments are scattered about (to my plus-one’s great sadness, the didgeridoo did not actually get played during the show, but most of the others did). Art pieces, including a giant dangling skeleton and a massive Easter egg painted Tiffany blue, create the perfect chaos to nurture creation. It feels authentic, which is the mood for the whole show. There are different musical numbers, but the pace is intense, leaving the audience no time for clapping. But who claps at a jam session? These are artists creating art for themselves, and letting us watch. It feels almost voyeuristic, like you’re watching something now extinct, a real-life art film from a bygone era.
Before the show, the audience is told to “come with no expectations,” which is good advice, because any you might have brought in with you will be far exceeded by the time bows roll around.
Crenca began by introducing us to the rest of The Gillen Street Ensemble, which includes his wife, along with other family members and friends, and telling us he wrote “the book” – which he then produced, a larger-than-life book of poetry which will be the script for the next hour. Hethen launched into a free verse, bluntly honest narrative of his life thus far, highlighting the good and bad, legal and more questionable, important and mundane.
As Crenca started a strong narrative about the pointlessness of traffic cameras at two in the morning, the shift in the audience was palpable. This was something we could all relate to. This was something we could understand. My first thought: If this man had a church, I’d go. My second thought: Oh, this is how cults get made.
And for the rest of the production, Crenca, along with the highly talented ensemble of dancers and musicians, held the audience in his grasp as topics shifted away from cameras and onto other global issues. The poems, often stream-of-consciousness, are the kind of thing slam poets think they’re producing and rarely are. A small troupe of four dancers gives abstract life to his words.
“The only path to salvation here and now is a radical change of course,” Crenca exhorts at one point.
Projection screens flash relevant (or non-sequitur) images and video, and, always, the band plays on. It’s immersive and intense, lasts just over an hour, and goes by in a blink. At the end, Crenca does not offer a tidy denouement, instead wondering aloud about what will end up mattering, and if any answers exist at all.
If you’re looking for a traditional musical theater experience with a linear narrative and easy conclusions, this isn’t the show you’re looking for, but I would challenge you to go anyway. There will always be another production of Seussical (no hate intended), but this is something rare, the kind of art that is less frequently made and even more scarcely offered for public consumption these days. You’ll leave feeling energized, perhaps charged toward change, and definitely with something to talk about.
“I dream of a peaceful passing from here to where,” Crenca concludes at the end of the play.
It’s all any of us can really hope for.
“From Here to Where” runs through Oct. 5, 2025, at The Wilbury Theatre Group, 475 Valley St., Providence (inside the Waterfire Arts Center). Tickets may be obtained at the box office, online at thewilburygroup.org or by calling 401.400.7100 Ext 0.
