The mission of Front Porch Theatricals is to present high quality productions of hidden gems from the musical theater world – shows that may not have achieved great fame or longevity on Broadway but that deliver an emotional and theatrical punch nonetheless. With Bright Star, the top-notch artists they have engaged at every level certainly deliver on that mission, although whether or not the musical itself deserves more acclaim than it has received to date may be a matter of the viewer’s tolerance for melodramatic sentiment.
The music and story were written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell; Martin wrote the book and Brickell supplied the lyrics. Their collaboration on the musical grew out of an earlier collaboration on a bluegrass album, and the music for Bright Star is squarely in that musical idiom, tightly played by a small orchestra under the direction of Douglas Levine and featuring the bluegrass trio of Marina Pendleton (fiddle), Bryce Rabideau (mandolin), and Jim Scott (banjo), each of whom gets a moment to showcase their formidable talents during a musical interlude leading into the second act.
The catchy, toe-tapping music is the show’s best feature; the songs are woven in close harmonies that eloquently capture the vibe of the early twentieth century South in which the story takes place. A cast of sixteen vocal powerhouses pulls those tight harmonies into focus with a gorgeous lushness, helmed by stellar performances from leading players Erin Lindsay Krom, Jerreme Rodriguez, Miller Kraps, and Marnie Quick as the two pairs of lovers around which the story is structured.
Bright Star’s plot bounces back and forth between 1945, when Billy Cane (Kraps), an aspiring young writer, returns to North Carolina after serving in WWII, and 1923, when Alice Murphy (Krom), a young woman chafing under restrictive Bible Belt social norms in a small town in North Carolina, falls in love with Jimmy Ray (Rodriguez), son of the powerful and corrupt Mayor Dobbs (a menacing Darrel R. Whitney). She gets pregnant, the mayor takes the baby boy away to have it adopted out, she eventually becomes the hard-biting editor of the literary journal to which Billy submits his stories, and if you’re anything like me at this point in the plot you’ve already figured out where it’s headed. In order to get to its tidy resolution, the musical depends on all sort of coinkydinks and plot contrivances; one is best off not thinking too hard about it, as the musical’s charm relies wholly on an audience content with just going along for the ride.
Director Nick Mitchell and choreographer Mara Newberry Greer have skillfully crafted the staging such that the scene seems to be perpetually in motion; repeated patterns of movement in transitions and in the choreography link disparate moments of the play and keep the two time periods distinct. The costumes, by Anthony James Sirk, also draw a vivid distinction between the 1920s and the 1940s, and make it possible for both eras to play out on Jonmichael Bohach’s mobile and flexible scenic design. Overall, the creative team has made a lot of strong choices that serve the storytelling well; however, the decision to void the South of African-Americans (the ensemble is all-white with the exception of one Asian-American actor) is both puzzling and regrettable.
While you might expect a work by Steve Martin to have a bit more comic edge and satire – or to do more sending up of its subject – this musical demands to be played without irony, and the cast does a great job of serving up the corn straight. Kraps gives Billy an utterly believable aw-shucks-golly-gee-whillikers innocence and enthusiasm; Quick is sweet and amiable in her yearning for his affection; Whitney all but twirls a mustache in the role of the villainous mayor; Rodriguez is dashing and chivalrous as the privileged mayor’s son; and Krom adroitly limns both the prim and proper editor who would have excised that last adverb from this sentence, and the free-spirited young woman who lets down her hair with the most interesting boy in town.
Predictable as the plot of this musical is, its emotional climax still delivers a real punch, thanks largely to the genuine feeling the ensemble breathes into the action. The play’s soaring, uplifting hymn at the end, “At Long Last,” is delivered with a passionate optimism that will leave even the most cynical audience member feeling like all is right with the world.
The Pittsburgh Tatler 