Trans­par­ent Musi­cale Finale review – A colour­ful, flawed crescendo

‘How can I be home and feel so alone?’ This is the burn­ing ques­tion each mem­ber of the Pfef­fer­man fam­i­ly is try­ing to answer, as a unit and as indi­vid­u­als, fol­low­ing the news of their Moppa’s death. Seem­ing­ly quo­tid­i­an moments are inter­rupt­ed only to change their lives, their con­cept of home and iden­ti­ty forever.

Their par­ent has left them with so many ques­tions, unhealed wounds and a pletho­ra of feel­ings Transparent’s musi­cal finale attempts to exam­ine, and final­ly dis­card under a rain­bow-coloured flag of Jew­ish guilt and mis­ery. And while we still get to feel the unsaid and read between the lines of the said, so much of what made this incred­i­bly self-involved, trau­ma­tised and sex­u­al­ly lib­er­at­ed and oppressed fam­i­ly so intrigu­ing, is lost in its bril­liant­ly com­posed yet poor­ly exe­cut­ed musi­cal numbers.

Moppa’s death was a deci­sion brought on not by a nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion in the show’s sto­ry­line, but the vio­lat­ing behav­iour of the man who brought her to life, name­ly Jef­frey Tam­bor. For a show as path­break­ing and loud­ly proud as Trans­par­ent, the accu­sa­tions against Tam­bor were par­tic­u­lar­ly hard-hit­ting and caused audi­ences to ques­tion the series as well as cre­ator Jill Soloway’s integri­ty and loy­al­ty towards the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Soloway has been crit­i­cised for the show’s lack of trans rep­re­sen­ta­tion and diver­si­ty, but they deserve great respect for attempt­ing to give fans a wor­thy send off.

The deci­sion to kill off Mop­pa and focus the finale on how her death affects the nuclear fam­i­ly and their deeply root­ed trans­gen­er­a­tional guilt is a fine one. The same can’t quite be said about the deci­sion to make a song-and-dance out of it. The 90-minute spe­cial is indeed spe­cial – turn­ing an estab­lished tone and that dis­tinct mum­blecore-feel into a glitzy Hol­ly­wood-style musi­cal com­plete with bright stage lights and cos­tume changes can’t have been an easy feat.

There­fore, one can only admire the cast’s ded­i­ca­tion to a rev­o­lu­tion­ary project they evi­dent­ly firm­ly believe in, even if it means break­ing out of their com­fort zones and not quite hit­ting every note. Faith Soloway, Jill’s old­er sis­ter and the musical’s com­pos­er and co-pro­duc­er, has done a fan­tas­tic job – the songs, lyrics and melodies feel true to the raw­ness fans of the show have grown to love. Yet many moments sim­ply aren’t affect­ing in the way they are clear­ly intended.

This is espe­cial­ly true of Shelly’s (Judith Light) musi­cal num­ber ​‘Your Bound­ary Is My Trig­ger’, in which she tries once more and, to seem­ing­ly no avail, to express how her children’s keep­ing her at arm’s length affects her. What is a beau­ti­ful­ly hon­est lyri­cal expres­sion of what it means to be a moth­er of a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion is some­how lost against the Broad­way-esque back­drop, and the dis­trac­tion of a troupe of mid­dle-aged back­up dancers wear­ing skin-toned leo­tards and bun­ny slippers.

It’s the same for Rabi Raquel’s (Kathryn Hahn) moment in the spot­light. As excit­ing as it is to see her back on the show for this final reunion, her per­for­mance of a song that – quite right­ly – urged the Pfefferman’s to ​“sit in it” (i.e. their shit, their grief) is ham­pered by a clum­sy tran­si­tion from typ­i­cal­ly intense fam­i­ly dis­cus­sions and frus­tra­tions into an unnec­es­sar­i­ly sexy, mod­ern cabaret spec­ta­cle that was uncom­fort­able to watch. Giv­en the show’s knack for cre­at­ing uneasy ten­sion, per­haps this was pre­cise­ly the point – but if it was, it doesn’t real­ly come across as such.

Transparent’s musi­cal finale is a study of iden­ti­ty, fam­i­ly (“Mom, I’m not you, I’m me!”) and grief that comes to a colour­ful crescen­do dur­ing the Shi­va-turned-Bar mitz­vah with the song ​‘Joy­a­caust’. This dar­ing, some­what dis­taste­ful yet fit­ting track per­fect­ly encap­su­lates pret­ty much every­thing this show is about: the clash­ing of cul­tures and iden­ti­ties, the (mis)interpretations of rules and lib­er­ties, and the abil­i­ty to make light of even the dark­est moments in (fam­i­ly) history.