Thursday night, Andy Grammer took to the Ridgefield Playhouse stage for the second night in a row for his “Greater Than” one man show. The show was billed as an ‘intimate set of songs, storytelling and poetry’, I am not sure I put much thought into that before we went and wasn’t able to find a setlist from anyone else before either, so I went in not sure what to expect. When we entered the theater we were given a pen and a card. On the card were 3 prompts. Once I started reading I said ‘Oh no, what have we gotten ourselves into?!’ The first prompt was: Write the name of someone you deeply loved and who meant a lot to you who has passed away. Followed by Write an act of service you have done for someone else. And finally, Write the name of someone who has saved your life – physically, mentally or spiritually.
As the show began, Andy’s creative director came out and talked to us a bit about the cards and said we didn’t need to participate if we were not comfortable doing so and the more you write the better experience you will get out of it. I decided to opt out of participating. He also warned that there has no been a night of the show yet where he hadn’t cried.
Andy came out – and most of his talking to the audience about his life were actually a series of poems. The idea of the evening was that he had heard that if you did acts of kindness for others, in the name of your loved one who had passed, it is like sending them a gift to wherever they are. After his Mom passed he wasn’t sure what to do with himself and he ended up offering to write songs for others and was getting all these stories about people going in for surgery or in comas and he quickly would send them a song video and realized that this all could be bigger than him. He also had a few weird coincidence stories that were absolutely wild but it does make you think there may be some other force going on.
As he told his story, he also discussed what things were greater than others, for a bunch of objects that he had on the stage. Each of those items were also connected to one of his songs that he ended up singing for us.
He went through the cards – first the who saved my life and had the people come up to a phone and talk to him a bit about the person and why. For the acts of service, he said if you do it and record it to broadcast it, it loses its appeal, so to keep things anonymous he just quickly read through several of the cards. The one that didn’t remain anonymous? “I didn’t kill my daughter when she stole the BMW” That Dad proudly raised his hand.
At closer to the end of the show he had the people come up to discuss someone they loved who passed and asked them a series of questions that he wanted them to answer as if they were talking to their loved on. When they think of them, what they’d thank them for, etc. He also sort of explained the concept of the phones as part of the show because a man in Japan lost a loved one and set up a phone in his garden to call his loved one and have one sided conversations. A year later there was a tsunami, and people who lost loved ones would come to his garden to use his phone. Then the lights went dim and he moved the phone that was on the stage to the center and called his Mom and answered all the questions he had asked the audience to answer about her.
After the show we got to say hey to Andy and get hugs and photos! He is always so sweet, with his family there (we met his wife too!) We weren’t sure if he’d come out so we were very happy when he did!
