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    Theatre Review: SRO Theatre’s Big River Tries to Conjure a Bygone America

    Big RiverĀ is easily one of my favorite musicals ever, certainly my favorite musical to come out in the 1980s. Some of that is nostalgia, it was the first touring production of a Broadway show I ever saw as a child. But more than that, it might be the finest synthesis of adaptor and source material, up there with Kander and Ebb’sĀ ZorbaĀ orĀ Kiss of the Spider Woman. Humorist and ballad-writer Roger Miller proved himself the perfect lens to refract Mark Twain’sĀ The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnĀ (along with book writer William Hauptman), maybe the greatest American novel. It’s a score that still glows brightly, a knife in the heart of a quintessentially American longing, hypocrisy, cruelty, and joy.

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    So I was disappointed to note at the end of the three-hour SRO Theatre production, directed by Dee Shepard, which opened this week, my overwhelming feeling was of boredom and frustration. This story of Huck Finn’s (Caleb Baker) faking his own murder and taking off down the flooding Mississippi River with his friend, escaped slave Jim (Brandon Buchanan) feels sadly inert. The production takes place on a bare stage with a couple of crates and very minimal props – a jug of whiskey, a corncob pipe, a coffin. I generally really like the concept of stripping down a big show, taking away much of the spectacle, and highlighting the songs. On paper, Big RiverĀ feels like it would lend itself perfectly to such a treatment, much like SRO’s terrific The FantasticksĀ last season, as the heart of it is the friendship between the two outcasts. The trouble with that approach here is the third, in many ways the main, character in this story is America. The sense of a bustling, rotten, beautiful, horrifying America is scrubbed off and that lack turns into rot, making everything echo with kind of a hollowness.

    SRO Theatre's production of Big River runs through May 7th. Photo courtesy SRO Theatre.
    SRO Theatre’s production of Big River runs through May 7th. Photo courtesy SRO Theatre.

    The absence of a set is not leavened with any sort of creative lighting or much movement on stage. Everything feels very three-steps-then-stop-and-sing. This exposes some of the weakness in the book’s necessary simplification of the source material and also reminds the audience howĀ talky the show can be. There are what feel like long gaps between those gorgeous songs and plot twists just seem dumb and baffling instead of zany or absurd. This is exacerbated by the miscasting of both Finn and Tom Sawyer (Anthony Guerrini). Sawyer is lessĀ a charming blowhard and more a grating poindexter, it was hard to picture anyone following him into his harebrained schemes, key when these schemes could end tragically. Huck Finn’s simplicity feels less Christ-like, more bumbling dullard. His wins don’t feel like transcendence. Jim and Pap Finn (Thor Collard who also plays Harvey Wilkes and Uncle Silas) both work well but it’s not enough.

    What the production does 100% justice to are those Miller songs. Chipper Snow’s taut music direction and the crack five-piece band of Robert Loar on upright bass and percussion, Ted Reich on harmonica, Josh Dillingham on guitar, Jordan Shear on violin,Ā and a pianist sadly not named in my program, are supple, driving, raunchy, and righteous in the turns they need to be. Baker and Buchanan sing beautifully separately and their voices are magic in concert with one another. The soaring “Muddy Water” and the wistful “River in the Rain” with its harmonies landing on “River, don’t you care?” imply some of the America missing in the overall production. Collard’s show-stopper “Guv’ment” perfectly walks the line of savant truth-teller and delusional crackpot, menacing and pathetic exactly as it needs to be with that tart line, “Lord, don’t you love ’em sometimes?”

    David Rausch’s Young Fool brings the house down with the infectious “Arkansas” and Wilma Hatton’s Alice brought tears to my eyes with her heartbreaking and hopeful “The Crossing”. Ashton Brammer, in the small but pivotal part of Mary Jane, knocks one of Miller’s most gorgeous ballads, “You Oughta Be Here with Me,” right out of the park with glittering assists from Corrine Gorgas and Mina Foreman and provides a glow that sent chills down my spine with Jim and Huck on the thesis statement of the show, “Leavin’s Not the Only Way to Go.”

    This look at the way we treat each other badly and the way we find redemption in stepping outside of societal norms couldn’t be more relevant. It’s as vital now as when the musical came out in 1984 and it’s as vital as when the novel came out in 1884. It’s a shame so little of that cuts as deep in this production as it should but it’s impossible to not walk out humming at least half these tunes.

    Big RiverĀ runs through May 7th with performances at 8:00pm Friday and Saturday as well as 2:00pm on Sunday May 1st and Saturday May 7th. For tickets and more information, visitĀ srotheatre.org

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    Richard Sanford
    Richard Sanfordhttp://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/
    Richard Sanford is a freelance contributor to Columbus Underground covering the city's vibrant theatre scene. You can find him seeking inspiration at a variety of bars, concert halls, performance spaces, museums and galleries.
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