Hey, what’d you do for the pandemic? Sorry to be so 2022, but the topic’s hard to avoid regarding Dave Malloy’s Three Houses, currently running at the Signature Theatre. We certainly know what Malloy did: He wrote a musical triptych about Covid Times. Or rather, about three people losing their minds from isolation and introspection during lockdown in Latvia, Taos, and Brooklyn, and how they’re redeemed through connection in song.

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

Three Houses is a sort of companion piece to Malloy’s previous Signature outing (in the same space, too: the roomy and flexible Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre). Internet addiction was the theme in 2019’s Octet, set in a church basement redolent of AA meetings, but which really served as a metaphorical space for purging sins. Each of the eight characters in Octet got a number explaining how being Extremely Online derailed their lives. It ended, as Three Houses does, with a gently hopeful move towards peace. Where the earlier show was a cappella, Three Houses has a small but colorful ensemble of piano, organ, strings, and French horn (plus electronics). Malloy has also scaled down the number of protagonists.

Which invites us to do the math. Octet covered eight stories in 100 minutes. Three Houses rolls out a trio of tales in about the same time. An average of 12 minutes per character previously, 33 in the........

© Observer