REVIEW: Safety Not Guaranteed (Signature Theatre)
It’s really interesting what media they’ll turn into a musical these days.
I’m writing this while watching the film Safety Not Guaranteed (2012). (It’s free on Tubi!) It’s a certifiably mumblecore film, taking place at both the height of Facebook’s natural popularity and the tail-end of the analogue era. The mildly twee aesthetic, Pacific Northwest romanticism, and signature stomp-clap-hey soundtrack are all there. It’s giving 2012, for better (a nostalgic coziness) or worse (I haven’t heard “r*tard” said this much since middle school.) This keeps happening in the American theatre: turning generation-old cult films into musical properties. But where the likes of Beetlejuice and Death Becomes Her succeed by understanding their inherent flavor of filmed camp, Safety Not Guaranteed is a film so subdued that it begs the question of its own relevance more than a decade later—not just as a cult “classic”, but even in a second life as a staged musical.
Book/Music
“WANTED: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.” (Roll credits.)
If you saw an ad like that in the paper, what would you do? If you’re a struggling magazine, you obviously go check it out. You need the clicks, after all. Meet Darius: she’s an intern at one based in Seattle, and her boss Jeff has been assigned to find the author of the ad, which has been published in a small-town paper in coastal Washington. Jeff, known asshole, has other ideas though: try hooking up with an old flame, lounging at the hotel, or getting drunk, to name a few. Only Darius (and Arnaud, another intern, who is basically irrelevant to the show) care about the story since their jobs are most at risk. Darius ends up setting out to discover the author: a tin-foil-hat delude named Kenneth, who is cryptically working on the supposed time machine to avenge . She also, inexplicably, connects with him on some level as she goes undercover to investigate the time machine. This part of the plot from the movie is largely untouched, even if it wasn’t that good to begin with; Darius and Kenneth are the black sheep of their circles, sure, but does that alone create chemistry? Darius is smart, she’s too independent to be dealing with the drivel she does, and so it doesn’t make much sense in 2026 to me that she plays so ridiculously easy into the antics of the himbos present in the story. The wallflower quirkiness of the film is also awkwardly preserved, which keeps the volume of its electric indie rock score by Ryan Miller weirdly low. All those drums, all those amps, for the show to sonically feel less like Passing Strange and more like The Suburbs by Arcade Fire. This is to say that the music itself is generally piquant and diverse; on the other hand, the lyrics can sometimes be offensively elementary. It’s a film that, on paper, could potentially work as a musical with some elbow grease. The parental melancholia flanked by a zany temporal adventure made me hope for something like a Wrinkle In Time-King of the Yees crossover, but Safety Not Guaranteed is exactly the opposite of what it says: safe indeed. 2/10
Acting
The performances universally feel far too influenced by the film, particularly visible in the dull expression and suffocated vocals of Darius (Mia Pak). Her leading turn attempts to evoke Aubrey Plaza’s (Darius in the film) signature deadpan persona, one that makes for entertaining fodder on screens but is a decidedly less fun experience onstage, especially in a piece with such high-octane promise. The silver lining is the ensemble’s consistency in this regard. There isn’t really any over-the-top power to be had in the production, outside of one number by a drunken Jeff (Preston Truman Boyd) and one double-team number by Darius and Kenneth. Curiously enough, it’s the smattering of background appearances that keep the show on its toes the most often, primarily handled by Joshua Morgan and Erin Weaver. The requirement of their role changes give a pulse to an otherwise milquetoast affair. 1/10
Production
The claustrophobic staging immediately feels strange to see in Signature’s MAX theatre. In a space so known for its dynamism, the whole proscenium is occupied by a dense construction site, seemingly limiting the ceiling of interaction; this level of intimacy feels much better suited to their smaller ARK space. The DIY aesthetic by director Oliver Butler is visually clunky during non-musical moments, but is easily maneuvered and creates a great visual diatribe between the audience and the onstage band. Additionally, several elements do stand out positively: consider the personable costumes by Sharzhad Mazaherim and the lighting design by Jason Lyons that is highly energetic and impressive (when it actually gets featured, such as in the impressive finale.) 7/10
Viz
Signature has been marketing Safety in a confusing way, at least to me. The main promotional art, with its warm technobabble and mad-scientist visual language, is more frenetic and busy than the show itself often is. Is the show a “time travel adventure”? Not really; it’s an emotional play about yearning for the past and not being satisfied with life’s journey, that happens to include time travel being mentioned as a means of starting things off. Entering the MAX to be greeted with an industrial warehouse doesn’t help the case. Normally, I could look past this if the bait-and-switch felt worthwhile, but I don’t think the material is strong enough at this point. 2/10
Verdict
Safety Not Guaranteed needs a lot of adjustment to translate a pensive film with a loud premise like its 2012 basis into a stage production that asks more than it tells, and one that feels like it’s happy to be there. 12/40
