Woody Sez

Woody Sez, at the American Repertory Theater
Gratuitous Violins rating: ***1/2 out of ****

My introduction to Woody Guthrie came in elementary school. We took a class trip to the symphony and at the end of the concert, we all sang "This Land is Your Land." It was nice and patriotic, nothing the least bit controversial.

As an adult, I read Joe Klein's biography, Woody Guthrie: A Life. I learned that Guthrie's most famous song was written in 1940 as a rebuke to "God Bless America." (I'm guessing we didn't sing the verse that included "By the relief office, I'd seen my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, Is this land made for you and me?")

In Woody Sez, David Lutken, who created the show with Nick Corley, also talks about learning Guthrie's music as a kid. He remembers singing "Riding in My Car" in nursery school. Then, he slips effortlessly into the character of the legendary folksinger, weaving together Guthrie's life and music in an absorbing and tuneful 90 minutes.

The other performers - Darci Deaville, Helen Jean Russell and David Finch - play various people in Guthrie's life and all four play lots of his music. The program lists more than two dozen songs and a variety of instruments including guitars, fiddles, harmonicas and two soup spoons from a thrift shop in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

This is an intimate show that uses folk music to evoke a turbulent time in American history: the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. There are no video projections or special effects or turntable sets. The design by Luke Hegel-Cantarella is simple - wooden benches and chairs for the actors to sit on, photos of Guthrie hanging over a scrim with a scene that looks like it could be his native Oklahoma.

Lutken doesn't have Guthrie's nasally twang and he doesn't really try to imitate him. But he's a great storyteller, with an affable, conversational style that really drew me in. He explores how Guthrie's love of music was nurtured by the ballads his mother sang to him, by the songs he learned from migrants and oil field workers, and his wanderlust, how he crisscrossed the country in the 1920s and '30s, writing about the things he saw and the people he met.

I'm a big fan of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, both of whom were profoundly influenced by Guthrie and have covered his work, so I've heard some of these songs before. But hearing them in the context of their times and in the context of Guthrie's life, played simply and unadorned, made them more meaningful.

Woody Sez paints an especially vivid portrait of the Dust Bowl, a time when hundreds of thousands of families left the Great Plains for California. Once there, life did not turn out to be the "Garden of Eden" they imagined. Many of the "Okies" ended up as migrant laborers. Guthrie wrote about them movingly in songs like "Do Re Mi" and "Talking Dust Bowl Blues."

Through his music, Guthrie targeted the inequities in society and politicians of all stripes. Woody Sez notes that he was redlisted, blacklisted and all other kinds of listed. But it struck me that his songs, for all their seriousness, could be quite funny and catchy. There's a mocking humor and a scathing indictment in "The Jolly Banker," and you can sing along.

Woody Sez moves rather quickly through the last 20 years of Guthrie's life, ending with his struggle against the debilitating effects of Huntington's disease, which killed him in 1967 at age 55. After that, a reprise of "This Land is Your Land" felt incredibly emotional. I was choked up as I sang with everyone else.

And his songs, of course, are still topical. He wrote about the unemployed, about people losing their homes to foreclosures, about the rights of workers and the plight of illegal immigrants. He also wrote children's songs and Chanukah songs and songs about the great natural beauty of America - from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters - and how it belongs to all of us.

Woody Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912, so this year marks his centennial. Woody Sez runs at A.R.T. through June 3. It will be performed at the Adirondack Theatre Festival in July and this fall at the Northlight Theatre, just outside Chicago. This is a beautifully drawn portrait of an important American voice and it deserves a wide audience.

Real Broadway babies?

Has there ever been an actual Broadway baby? I'm not talking about a talented child performer but a real, live infant in a Broadway show.

I was so taken with seeing a baby in Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater. Simply adorable! Since the musical is moving to Broadway in December, I'm curious about whether New York State has ever allowed a child that young to appear onstage.

Two children alternate in the role, Nile and Mackenzie Lee, the twins of cast member NaTasha Yvette Williams. (I remember her fierce Sofia from The Color Purple.) There's a note in the program that says they appear by permission of the Office of the Attorney General, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I've seen plenty of young kids in Broadway musicals: Mary Poppins, The Lion King and South Pacific, to name a few. Usually they've been old enough to walk. I think the youngest was the little boy who played Coalhouse Walker III in Ragtime but he only appears at the very end. For the infant Coalhouse, they used doll. (And they switch to a doll for Porgy and Bess, too).

I did a quick check of the Internet Broadway Database and found that there have been 18 Broadway performers named "Baby," 22 productions with the word "baby" in their title and numerous songs, including "Broadway Baby" from Follies. But I couldn't find any birthdates. And many of the actors date from the early 20th century. Baby seems to have gone out of style as a nickname.

Google wasn't much help when I searched for the youngest Broadway performer. All I could come up with were the youngest Tony winners: Frankie Michaels, 10, for Mame in 1966 and Daisy Eagan, 12, in 1991 for The Secret Garden.

I hope Nile and Mackenzie get to make their Main Stem debut. They'd look great at the Tony Awards wearing this.

Stephen Sondheim on Porgy and Bess

I've never seen Porgy and Bess. I'm not even sure I've ever heard any of the songs. So the objections raised by Stephen Sondheim to changes in the upcoming production go over my head.

In fact, some of the things that have gotten stuck in his craw are downright perplexing. In his letter to The New York Times, Sondheim says that the line "Bring my goat!" which apparently has been taken out, is "one of the most moving moments in musical theater history." Really?

To be honest, Porgy and Bess was on a list of works I had no interest in ever seeing. I knew it took place in a poor black community in South Carolina in the 1930s and I figured it would be a stereotypical portrait. The song titles made me cringe: "Oh, Dere's Somebody Knockin at de Do," "Here Come de Honey Man," "I Ain't Got No Shame." I could go on but you get the point.

Despite my reservations, I bought a ticket to see Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., later this month, in its pre-Broadway engagement.

What made me change my mind was Audra McDonald, the four-time Tony winner who'll play Bess. I have enormous respect for McDonald. I figure if she's signed on, then I would give it a chance.

And I was glad to read the article in The Times that drew Sondheim's attention, in which representatives of the Gershwin and Heyward estates express their desire for a version of Porgy and Bess that would draw African-American theatergoers.

So it shocked me to read Sondheim's letter excoriating McDonald, director Diane Paulus and Suzan-Lori Parks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American playwright who is adapting the book for the musical. To be frank, it's a bit unseemly for someone of Sondheim's stature to come down so hard before the first preview. With great power comes great responsibility.

The sniping at McDonald seems especially petty. She has been a fierce advocate for gay rights, for which she is rightly praised. So when she speaks as an African-American woman about her concerns with racism in Porgy and Bess, she deserves to be treated with respect.

I understand that Sondheim is speaking from the perspective of a musical theatre purist who has a great love for Porgy and Bess. But instead of calling out the largely African-American performers and creative team for their "arrogance" I wish he'd at least consider the viewpoint of African-Americans toward this work. It doesn't even seem to have entered his mind.

In an article in The Boston Globe, the performers and creative team talk about the work and about the importance of adapting it for a modern audience.

McDonald said that while she's performed songs from Porgy and Bess in concert, she's been reluctant to play Bess onstage. She mentions the "Sambo-type racist talk" that bothered her. “I want them to be real people in the way that Lorraine Hansberry was able to lift the shade and [let] everybody peer into a real American family with ‘Raisin in the Sun.’ ’’

Parks said the song “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’ ’’ “has stuck in the craw of many a folk, because people have interpreted it as the happy darky song: There he is, out of nowhere, for no reason, singin’ about how he ain’t got nothin’ and how that makes him happy.’’

Philip Boykin, who plays Crown, says: “There are things I’ve done in the opera ‘Porgy and Bess’ that I’ve hated for years. I’ve hated the lines.’’ But with Parks willing to hear suggestions, he’s been able to ditch some of them. “I just love it,’’ he said. “I love it, love it, love it, love it, love it.’’

I'll admit I'm not a purist. If somebody wants to remake my favorite movie, Casablanca, and have (spoiler alert!) Ilsa stay with Rick at the end, I'd say, "that sounds interesting." As far as I know Porgy and Bess did not come down from God at Mount Sinai, delivered into the arms of George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. (And this idea that a work is sacrosanct, that it can never be reinterpreted or altered, isn't that how a lot of people feel about the Bible?)

The Globe article notes "what has been the greatest obstacle for Porgy and Bess over the decades: the perception that this depiction of a black community in the American South, written in dialect by whites, is a racist work."

No one wants to make Porgy and Bess unrecognizable. But there's a difference between making an audience confront its prejudices, no matter how uncomfortable that may be, and making them comfortable in their prejudices.

If we can make the portrayal of black people in the 1930s less offensive, if we can make black audiences feel welcome and performers more comfortable, while still retaining the elements that everyone says make Porgy and Bess a great work, then why not? Or at least, why not try?

Red Sox musical, an update

I've gotten a dozen or so hits (pun intended) recently from people searching for information about the Boston Red Sox musical in the lineup at Cambridge's American Repertory Theater.

So I figure with spring training just around the corner, it's time for an update.

The musical begins previews May 14 and runs through June 27 at the Loeb Drama Center. When I first wrote about the show, it was called Red Sox Nation. The name's been changed to Johnny Baseball. (I like the old name better but sadly, no one asked for my opinion.)

The story, described as "an exhilarating blend of fact, fiction and the mystical power of the game," spans the years from 1919 to 2004, when the Red Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino to win the World Series after an 86-year drought.

At its heart is a romance between white baseball player Johnny O'Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Sox, and Daisy Wyatt, a dazzling black jazz singer. Their son is kept out of the major leagues because of his skin color. (The Red Sox were the last team to integrate.)

The creative team is the same: playwright Richard Dresser, who penned the Beach Boys jukebox musical Good Vibrations, is writing the book. Music and lyrics are by brothers Robert Reale and Willie Reale, who collaborated on the score for A Year with Frog and Toad.

Robert Reale said this week on Twitter that auditions have wrapped up and they've made several casting offers. Scott Pask is designing the set. Also on board are lighting designer Donald Holder and costume designer Michael McDonald.

There's an extensive interview with the Dresser and the Reale brothers on the A.R.T. Web site. Clearly, big themes are in play here.

"One of the things that drew us to this project was the idea that this whole region of the country was following this one team so closely and getting consistently defeated in these inspired, tragic ways," Dresser says. "In fact, we always spoke about this musical as a kind of Greek tragedy."

I like the combination of baseball lore, American history and love story. It's encouraging that Diane Paulus, the A.R.T's artistic director, will be directing the musical. She helmed the Tony-winning Broadway revival of Hair, one of my favorite shows of 2009.

Here's a clip of Paulus talking about the show when it was still called Red Sox Nation:



Update: The cast has been announced and it includes Stephanie Umoh, who was in the short-lived Ragtime revival on Broadway, as Daisy Wyatt; Colin Donnell as Johnny O'Brien; and Burke Moses as Babe Ruth.

Red Sox musical swings for the fences

Move over Damn Yankees - another baseball-themed musical is stepping up to the plate.

Red Sox Nation, a musical tragedy about the Boston Red Sox, will have its premiere in May 2010 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. The musical will be directed by A.R.T.'s artistic director, Diane Paulus, who's also helming the revival of Hair on Broadway.

Playwright Richard Dresser, a Massachusetts native and Brown University graduate known for his social comedies, is writing the book. (His lone Broadway credit is the book for the Beach Boys jukebox musical Good Vibrations, which ran for 94 performances, closing on April 24, 2005.)

The music and lyrics are by brothers Robert Reale and Willie Reale, who collaborated on the book and score for A Year With Frog and Toad, which ran on Broadway for 73 performances in 2003.

Here's the description from A.R.T's Web site:

"Red Sox Nation is an exhilarating blend of fact, fiction, and the mystical power of the game. It traces the origin of the Curse to a collision of three orphaned souls: Johnny O’Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Sox; his idol, the man-child Babe Ruth; and Daisy Wyatt, a dazzling African-American blues singer and the love of Johnny’s life."

Okay, it's probably not going to become a second Damn Yankees but it does sound intriguing.