![]() You can’t take my baby boy.”), the melodies Martin and Brickell have written are blessed with one bluegrass hook after another and the six songs added since Bright Star’s Old Globe debut are among its best.Īn inspired Bobbie transitions effortlessly from scene to scene on Eugene Lee’s expansive set as onstage musicians exit Lee’s mobile, multipurpose “bandstand” to stroll and strum amongst the actors, making them one with townspeople brought to vibrant life by Devin Archer, Audrey Cardwell (Edna), Max Chernin (Max), Robin De Lano (County Clerk), David Kirk Grant (Dr. She’s gone.” “A man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do, when a man’s gotta do, what he’s got to.” “You can’t take him. ![]() ![]() Though Bright Star’s rather pedestrian lyrics remain the show’s weaker element (“She’s gone. Time-travel back and forth between the 1920s and ‘40s no longer proves confusing thanks to a brand new opening number (Alice’s autobiographical “If You Knew My Story”) that establishes the “present-day” time frame, an inventive clothes-changing sequence that makes it clear we’ll be seeing Alice both as she is today and as she once was, and casting a pair of leading men easily distinguished one from the other.Ī refined book has cut Alice’s guilt-ridden sister Dora and made a particular plot twist a whole lot less easy to spot a mile away, and choreography I described as only “occasional” now plays a more major role in director Walter Bobbie’s supremely imaginative staging. Though said letter fails to fool seen-it-all Alice, Billy’s chutzpah does, and wonder of wonders there’s one of his stories that she actually kind of sort of likes, leaving our handsome young hero hopeful that he may one day see his name in the prestigious literary journal and providing Alice with quite possibly her next published writer.Īlready a feel-good crowd-pleaser in its 2014 Old Globe World Premiere, Bright Star has gone from diamond-in-the-rough to brightly polished gem, a textbook example of how much a creative team can learn from what used to be called an “out-of-town tryout.” Since the much-renowned Asheville Southern Journal seems as good a place as any to jump-start a career in creative writing, Billy heads off to the biggish city, where he makes it past editor Alice’s assistants Daryl (Jeff Blumenkrantz) and Lucy (Kaitlyn Davidson) to meet the lady herself and impress her with his storytelling promise (and a brand-new letter of recommendation from long-ago deceased Thomas Wolfe). Shively) has returned from WWII with dreams of literary stardom, though first he must recover from news delivered by his folksy Daddy (David Atkinson) that the soldier boy’s beloved mother has been “taken away” by a midnight visitor, his sorrow at her death somewhat tempered by the attentions of pert local librarian Margo (Maddie Shea Baldwin). Simultaneously in the 1945 present, local G.I. ![]() stages this month and next than the dazzling Carmen Cusack, reprising her Tony-nominated star turn as Alice Murphy in Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star, a musical so stunningly staged and gorgeous to the ear that it’s easy to go easy on its Stella Dallas/Imitation Of Life-style soap.ģ8-year-old Asheville, NC literary journal editor Alice has come a long way from the small town girl whose teenage romance with Jimmy Ray (Patrick Cummings), scion son of power-wielding small town mayor Josiah Dobbs (Jeff Austin), turned a teenage cockeyed optimist into the hard-edged all-business adult she is today. There’s no brighter star lighting up L.A. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |