A couple of anthems ring hollow in their insistent 1990s Broadway way, but America’s undersong stirringly comes through.Written by the award-winning composer/lyricist team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens ( Once on This Island, Seussical and Lucky Stiff), noted playwright Terrence McNally, and based on E.L. With its gorgeous singing, Lee’s production draws out the show’s musical beauty. Treachery leads to tragedy, but hope somehow perseveres. The opening number sets the thrilling piano rhythms of a nation stepping lively into the first decade of what will be a momentous century.ĭarkness and violence are an inescapable part of the story. Sarah has already revealed her true feelings for Coalhouse in her touching song to her baby, “Your Daddy’s Son.” Tender melancholy is one of the specialties of Flaherty and Ahrens, who are just as adept at rolling jazz. When Charles’ Sarah and Duncan’s Coalhouse sing “Wheels of a Dream,” private wishes, fueled by love, take an optimistic (and sadly all too precarious) leap into public declaration. The music deepens and expands the work of the actors, joining their characters to our national story and communicating what words fumble to express. The restraint of Warne and Ford speaks volumes about the disappointments and regrets that humanize their characters. Mother’s recoiling at Father’s moralizing coldness tells the story of their marriage, a battle between her social conscience and his capitalist control. Lee’s casting is so astute that whole characterizations are conveyed through the intensity of a stare or the turn of a head. This is quite a feat when you consider that the character, long obsessed with salacious vaudeville beauty Evelyn Nesbit (Katharine McDonough), undergoes a conversion after hearing anarchist Emma Goldman (Valerie Perri) at a Union Square rally that transforms him into a revolutionary. In fact, Warne’s Mother and Duncan’s Coalhouse are such affecting presences that they make even the more doubtful narrative contrivances possible to overlook.Įven Younger Brother, Mother’s sibling who has become a master at explosives at Father’s fireworks factory, seems convincing in Dylan Saunders’ strikingly idiosyncratic portrayal. The performers are strong across the board, so this is no criticism of their work. But the stars haven’t always aligned for the show, which was produced by scandal-rocked Livent Inc., whose co-founder Garth Drabinsky eventually served prison time in Canada for fraud. The 1998 Broadway premiere was a starry affair, with a cast that included Marin Mazzie, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Audra McDonald and even a young Lea Michele in the role of the Little Girl. The book by Terrence McNally and the score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens received Tony Awards, and had “The Lion King” not been in contention that year it likely would have won for best musical as well. The show contains some of the most breathtaking musical theater writing of the last 25 years. Morgan to occasionally assist in pushing along the fabricated plot.ĭramatic subtlety can’t help getting lost in the swirl. The saga of three sets of characters at the turn of what would come to be known as “the American century,” the show freely mixes the fictional with the factual in a theatrical montage that conscripts such famous figures as Harry Houdini, Booker T. Doctorow’s sweeping historical novel, swings for the narrative fences.
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