Discovering Stories in the Words Left Behind
Charles IsherwoodOctober 15, 2014: After watching Found, you may want to scurry home and incinerate the following: leftover to-do lists, sarcastic notes on the refrigerator demanding that spouse do dishes, quickly scribbled life plans, attempts at blank verse made after taking Ambien. Should you fail to do so, be warned that these bits of written detritus may not be safe from posterity, as this engaging oddball of a new musical attests. Found, which opened on Tuesday night at the Atlantic Theater Company, derives its title and much of its text from the magazine of the same name, which publishes collections of such writings. (“You have to make up your mind Mr. Dickens, ’twas either the best of times or the worst of times; it could scarcely be both.”) Davy Rothbart, the founder of Found, the magazine, is basically the principal character, and the musical, with a book by Hunter Bell and Lee Overtree, and music and lyrics by Eli Bolin, tells the (semi-fictionalized) story of the “Eureka!” moment of the magazine’s birth and, eventually, its near-death by success.
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