Honeyland is a loud and ardent but mild tribute to the tribulations of four White college grads in Boston who experience 1960s America in miniature. 

Their best song, “When I Grow Up,” sets them up for the decade’s frustrations. Mike (Ben James Tyrell) wants to “play for the Boston Red Sox.” He’ll be drafted and sent to Viet Nam. Helen (Anika Buchanan) wants to “sing like Kathryn Grayson.” She won’t have that career; she’ll have Mike’s baby soon after he’s killed in the war. Tom (Jacob Higdon) wants to be like Jack Kerouac and “write the Great American Novel.” He’ll desert his friends and look for inspiration in Mexico and Amsterdam. Fran (Abby Goldberg) wants to be “a famous girl detective . . . like Nancy Drew.” She’ll sublimate her unrequited love for Tom and join the activists in the National Organization for Women.

Ben James Tyrrell (Mike) as a folksinger

Abby Goldberg (Fran) and Anika Buchanan (Helen) rejoice in being “1960s Girls” while (far right) Jacob Higdon (Tom) broods. Photos by Thomas Mundell, Mundell Modern Pixels

Mike opens the show in uniform in Viet Nam. The rest of the show plays out in flashbacks that are set up by Fran’s expository lines. In a spot-on nod to Boston’s great folk-music scene, Mike solos two folk-like songs with a guitar. Then he launches and ropes his friends into a “fringe” theater group, to perform protest songs like “Push the Button” (meaning: launch The Bomb) to Fosse-like choreography by Michelle Lemon.

The fringe theater group they form, l-r: Ben James Tyrrell (Mike), Jacob Higdon (Tom), Anika Buchanan (Helen) and Abby Goldberg (Fran).  Photo by Thomas Mundell, Mundell Modern Pixels

With vintage video projections by Stage Manager Jackie Mates, period-appropriate costumes designed by Molly Goldberg, wigs designed by Bobbie Zlotnik, and lighting and sound designed by Ben Hostetler, the ‘60s are comfortably limned.

The ensemble sings “Smoking dope is fine,” but the next line is anachronistic: “It tends to fuck your mind.” And nobody says anything about LSD, although Mike’s “I Am Like the Universe” (the second-best song in the show) has the appropriately unsettling feel of an acid trip. Shoutout to music director and pianist Clare Cooper, and to the guitarist and drummer in her trio.

The actors and their performances are delightful. Their material . . . less so. Youthful naivete can inspire insightful songs, but quite a few lyrics are awkward.  Mike sings: “Life’s a heaven in Honeyland / I can take you there. / You can look at anything you want there. / You can even touch upon a star.” Fran and Helen sing: “We are 1960s girls. / It’s not a fantasy, / A new reality. / We’re gonna make some history / And we are on the move.”  Tom, en route back to Boston, sings: “I’m going home. / Will I find I can relate to this country of my fate?”

The songs are by Clarry Evans, who’s Australian. With all due respect for what it takes to write both music and lyrics, his songs are mostly colorless. The book of the show, and some of the lyrics, are by its director, Denny Lawrence. He has a more varied background than Evans, theatrically and internationally. But their songs and script seem to have come out of researching 1960s America, not from having been there or from interviewing people who were.

You will probably appreciate Honeyland better if you don’t have living memory of Grayson, Kerouac, NOW, LSD, or the folk-song revival; and were not old enough to protest or be drafted into the Vietnam War.

Honeyland runs through November 2 at The Triad Theater, 158 West 72nd Street https://theatreroo.com/

Opening photo: l-r Abby Goldberg (Fran), Ben James Tyrrell (Mike), Jacob Higdon (Tom), and Anika Buchanan (Helen) singing “When I Grow Up.” Photo by Thomas Mundell, Mundell Modern Pixels