Fever pitch; Picking up where John Cusack left off, Will Chase brings the lovelorn music fanatic of High Fidelity to Broadway.(Theater review)

Byline: Cressida Leyshon

If the slacker hero of High Fidelity, Nick Hornby's iconic 1995 novel about records, relationships, and top-five lists, were to come up with a list of five fictional characters least likely to burst into song, he might well give himself a place at the top. But that's exactly what 36-year-old Will Chase will be doing as Rob in the new musical adaptation of High Fidelity, which arrives on Broadway this month. "It's fun, in a twisted way," says Chase of playing the record-shop owner whose girlfriend, Laura (Jenn Colella), leaves him, setting off a quest to understand his dismal romantic history.

Under Walter Bobbie's direction, composer Tom Kitt, lyricist Amanda Green, and writer David Lindsay-Abaire have managed to turn the anxieties of the mid-30s single guy into musical comedy, combining brooding cynicism and rock-'n'-roll exuberance in equal measure. Chase, who has a tousled, direct charm, jokes, "It's an evening about a guy's journey from not being able to be in a committed relationship to kind of being in a committed ...