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Theater review: ‘The Notebook’ avoids cloying sentimentality in Costa Mesa

January 29, 2026

A couple’s passage through courtship, lost and found love and the waning days of marriage in “The Notebook,” newly arrived at the Segerstrom Center for the next 10 days, may be unabashedly sentimental, but emerges as a satisfying journey.

The source material of Nicholas Sparks’ 1994 original, best-selling novel was followed by the tearjerker 2004 hit movie version with Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Both yanked cloyingly hard on the heartstrings.

Toggling back and forth in time through a couple’s lifespan, the original story is rooted — or maybe “mired”? — in incessant tugs and pulls about love and a lifelong connection that to sustain must be remembered and cherished as the inevitabilities of aging closes in.

Beau Gravitte as Older Noah and Sharon Catherine Brown as Older Allie appear in a scene from “The Notebook,” playing at Segerstrom Center for the Arts through Feb. 8. ( Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

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What strengthens and elevates this musical version is an impactful score of songs from first-time Broadway composer and lyricist Ingrid Michaelson.

A singer-songwriter with a pop music background, Michaelson avoids wallowing in a Broadway-blockbuster score of dramatic crescendos and soaring arrangements.

Instead, she provides a surprising song cycle of folk-country style tunes with affecting melodies and un-weepy lyrics that feel impeccably wedded to Bekah Brunstetter’s efficient book. It’s almost as if the two of them were on Zoom, and as Brunstetter read the latest chunk Michaelson would write a song in the moment about how what she just heard would make the characters feel.

The show’s title provides the device for storytelling: elderly Noah reads aloud from a notebook to Allie, who is burdened with Alzheimer’s, which is robbing her of memories and makes the notebook diary she had kept as a younger person a novelty every time it is read to her.

Noah also sees these interludes as a way to keep their love alive as the years together are clearly running down.

The couple’s young, courting years are played by a second pair of actors, while two other actors play the couple as events and forces beyond their control provide obstacles for them coming together.

It’s a useful device for conveying a memory play, the main characters fully alive, the audience clearly absorbing the progression of their lives together and separately.

A virtue of the evening is the ensemble feel of this touring cast. The central couple, Allie and Noah, are each played by three different actors during the various times of the characters’ lives.

The smooth way this sextet operates — often as pairings during key scenes across the overall timeline, but at their best when many of the characters at different ages intermingle in scenes or songs — provides the connective tissue which especially knits the of actors.

A key is that most of the principals have Broadway backgrounds. Beau Gravitte is the story’s emotional rudder as the older Noah and he is a gentle, firm presence in interacting with his wife whose vulnerabilities are clearly gaining the upper hand.

Opposite him, Sharon Catherine Brown plays older Allie and she is emotionally open in projecting the vulnerabilities of her characters’ confusions, though also amusingly engaging with unexpected glints of saltiness.

Vocally, as the middle period Allie, Alysha Deslorieux has perhaps the cast’s most impactful voice. It’s fitting, since her character has the show’s warhorse number, the second act “My Days” and her sonic belt speaks to her background as Eliza in the Broadway production of “Hamilton.”:

The younger Allie and Noah, played respectively by Chloe Cheers and Kyle Mangold, are impulsively coltish as each other’s first young love.

It’s all the better that the talent on stage is strong since the scene design by David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis seems a bit of a muted afterthought in this show.

Ben Stanton’s lighting design is most prominent in the 21 vertical lighting bars that dangle over the proceedings changing colors to reflect varying moods in the action.

A new role only in the theater production, is a spritely physical therapist named Johnny, who aids connections between the older couple. He is cheerfully played by newcomer Connor Richardson in his national tour debut. His brief bio in the program ends with the animated shout-out to his mom: “watch this!”

All in all, fair enough advice for those thinking about seeing “The Notebook.”

‘The Notebook’

Rating: 3 stars (out of four possible)

When: Through Feb 8. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; Sunday, 1 and 6:30 p.m.

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa

Tickets: $39-$149

Information: 949-556-2787; www.scfta.org

Theater review: ‘The Notebook’ avoids cloying sentimentality in Costa Mesa Orange County Register

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Theater review: ‘The Notebook’ avoids cloying sentimentality in Costa Mesa

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