Kansas City Choir Boy

Prototype Festival. Composer-singer-playwright Todd Almond's latest music drama drew an avalanche of attention, once Courtney Love's participation in this production was announced. (Certainly her participation has helped make tickets scarce.) But the pop-culture hook doesn't mean all the attention is unjustified. "At Sixteen," a song that previously appeared on Almond's debut album, takes on a toothy complexity in the revised version arranged for this song cycle—without losing its immediacy.