'That Sordid Little Story' by New Colony: Notes of possibility in a muddled bluegrass musical
THEATER REVIEW: "That Sordid Little Story" ★★ Through Aug. 7 by New Colony at Viaduct Theater, 3111 N. Western Ave.; Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes; Tickets: $25 at 773-296-6024 or www.thenewcolony.org
“That Sordid Little Story” is certainly not a descriptive title of the new project at the New Colony Theatre. “That Messy Big Musical” would be more on point.
This is no less than an all-new bluegrass tuner that charts a young man's odyssey across the changing rural America of the early 1960s, in search of his elusive favorite band and, by extension, some answers to the deep questions that bedevil his life. Think Jack Kerouac or the Coen Brothers or some kind of reflective cultural fiction in an early issue of Rolling Stone and you'll get the attempted gestalt. And it is all staged on the expansive mainstage at the Viaduct Theatre, where the vistas of small towns and colorful personalities rustle around like wind through cotton.
In no way was this show ready for prime time. It's too long, too woolly, too stylistically unclear and, despite the weighty themes, it just doesn't have enough theatrical action to fill the space that serves as its host. But this is one of those problematic shows that contain enough raw ideas, enough fearless theatricality ambition, enough guts, to ensure that you'll be there when the lights go down again on the next New Colony creation. This one doesn't pop, but one from this joint will. Soon enough.
At this point, New Colony has a bluegrass suite. There's no shame there, and if “That Sordid Little Story” (the name, by the way, of the band the protagonist seeks) was staged in a smaller environment, where the music was allowed to lead the proceedings and the action could follow in a simpler, raw and less literal fashion, it might come much closer to working.
This is a company-devised affair. The writing is credited to Andrew Hobgood (who also directs, which was a mistake), Benno Nelson and Will Cavedo with the original music and lyrics coming from Henry Riggs, Chris Gingrich, Tara Sissom and Thea Lux (all of whom are in the on-stage band). It feels very much like their was no outside eye, no-one to keep an eye on dramatic truth and surely no-one to wield the pruning shears. The dramatic part of the writing does not sit very easily in its period—the scenes as young Billy (the genial Patriac Coakley) wanders in and out of trouble on the on the great American highway feel awkwardly contemporary, and yet an overall anachronistic style isn't established. You can't have it all ways.
The music was a lot of fun last weekend — and the lyrics are quite rich and savvy in that quirky, post-modern way. And when the band is playing, the show is warm and palatable. But when the music stops, the story wanders off into wilderness. We desperately need a sense of time, something that can root us in a human, sensual world of searching, underpinned by music.
— Chris Jones
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