Sorting, smoothing, and putting some punch into a spider web of plot lines is the work cut out for book writer Willy Holtzman and the two surviving composers of “Hard Road to Heaven,” a world premiere musical with oodles of potential at New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse through Sunday, March 23.
Assets abound and what seems like an outline for a show is already entertaining enough for director Jackson Gay’s production to please, but at this nascent stage, “Hard Road” sprawls with an overload of material that hasn’t quite found its dramatic impact. We receive information that affects us, but it arrives in a matter-of-fact, “oh-you-should-know-this-too” manner that explains or gets us past one of Holtzman’s twists without sounding a clear chord of climax or monumental surprise in our heads.
Holtzman is not to blame. His script is quite good, chocked full of snappy one-liners and shrewd folksy expressions that show the intelligence, perception, and sarcasm within his characters.
The dilemma is the wealth of material and figuring out how to present it so that is does land solidly, packs some wallop in its parade of revelations, and, most importantly, figuring out the Goldilocks balance between being one more American drama about a complicated family and a look into the successes and depressions of superstar show business.
“Hard Road” contains engaging elements of both threads. Now it needs to decide which is going to dominate — currently, it’s the family dynamics — or, ideally, how to blend the two dramatic arcs so they coalesce into a musical that is powerful of both fronts. Like “Gypsy.”
Another conundrum that’s good to have.
Each of Holtzman’s plot twists is punctuated by one or another admirable song by composers David Spangler, Jerry Taylor, and Marty Dodson.
The music, country (not Country-Western) in style but wandering deftly all over the popular music map, rouses and hits its mark in a way Holtzman’s book is still searching to find.
The general diminishment of lyrics and oversimplicity of tune in most new music is one of my most gnawing pet peeves. I go to bed nights wondering where, oh, where there might be another Oscar Hammerstein II or Ira Gershwin.
Spangler, Taylor, and Dodson’s songs might not reach the Pantheon level of the great American songbook, but they’re worth the hearing. They tell a story or advance a sentiment. They have texture. They express emotion or thoughts in the way a song should, not today’s usual rattling off of Hallmarky clichés in ways that would rightfully make Lorenz Hart cringe or list songs that would turn Cole Porter apoplectic.
It’s as if, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the composers of “Hard Road” unfailingly found a felicitous way to suit the tune to the moment and the moment to the tune.
The music and the basis of the book makes it clear what attracted Bucks County Playhouse to take on and help launch this new work. “Hard Road to Heaven” deserves to have life beyond the start the Playhouse gives it, but it’s at the beginning of the last stage of its journey to becoming produced and known and not its final version.
On one viewing, concentrating on several aspects at once, I can’t comment on how Holtzman, Spangler, and Dodson can hone their current script or juggle their songs for better clarity and intensity, but that’s the job that needs to be done. (Jerry Taylor died in 2016 but has a possible legacy piece in “Hard Road,” the rudiments of which Playhouse producing director Alex Fraser said in an opening night curtain speech have been kicking around for 40 years.)
Meanwhile, those songs are in excellent hands as “Hard Road to Heaven” features a talented, personality-loaded cast that makes the most of all that is given them but never fails to nail a musical number and show both why they are on the Bucks stage and are qualified to play characters who are pop music superstars or their worthy musical partners and backups.
A cast list containing Jackie Burns, Jerry Dixon, and Leah Hocking is good news to a veteran theatergoer before any show begins. In “Hard Road,” all three reinforce my enthusiastic impression of them from past work. Abetted by Elizabeth Teeter, Marcus Gladney, Jr., J. Robert Spencer, Bryan Fenkart, Nathaniel Hackmann, Cecilia Trippiedi, and Alec Ludacka, they meld into a formidable ensemble Jackson Gay has working to great advantage.
“Hard Road to Heaven” needs considerable work to get to its next level of development, but Gay and company are putting on a grand show that conceals most of the rough patches, accentuates the quality of the score, and is acted and sung with universal aplomb.
The lone cavil I have with the production, as opposed to the show as it stands, is Brandon Kelly’s choreography, which was too often scattered and unfocused in ensemble numbers.
Movement patterns didn’t seem to mesh or fill the stage in a way that soothed the eye. It may be a sign that numbers are changing position or being revised at this juncture in production, but except in a sequence in which Cecilia Trippiedi attempts to teach Alec Ludecka to manage even a basic box step, dances were often more jarring than enhancing.
The basis of “Hard Road to Heaven” makes one think of country music royalty, The Carter Family, with roots in Gospel under the mother, Maybelle, leading to country stardom for daughter, June, who marries Johnny Cash, and pop success for daughter Roseanne.
I said “basis,” not “outline.
“Hard Road” introduces us to a family in Tupelo, Mississippi, that, led by its matriarch, is eking out a living by singing Gospel music at churches throughout their home region and appearing as the featured act on a televangelist’s weekly program.
The father and mother are happy with their existence, but the older daughter, Jenny Dixon, is getting noticed for her extraordinary voice and has ambitions to become a country music star in Nashville.
Jenny is not alone in believing she can make it in Nashville, despite a 1950s prejudice against female headliners on country radio stations and the usual obstacles a striving performer faces. (I’m guessing from context it’s the ’50s; “Hard Rock” doesn’t make its chronology clear.)
Jenny makes it to the top, but family crises keep pulling her back to the older Dixons and her younger sister, 15 years her junior, Anna Grace (A.G.), who will cause disruptions that Jenny cannot ignore.
You see the cues for drama within this plot. It is the family element “Hard Road’s” creators have to sculpt into something smoother and slyer for their show to gain genuine traction.
Two places they can concentrate are quickening Jenny’s departure and ascent by eliding several early scenes in Tupelo into two at the most. The headache in doing so will be what to do with a couple of likable songs that follow the excellent keeper that is the opening number.
The show, perhaps, should begin right away with the number and then go into its backstory rather than the other way around.
One element that requires exponential beefing up is Jenny’s place as a superstar. We’re told she is the top woman performer in country music, but we never see it beyond some costumes.
At no time is the glamor, adulation, or majesty of being at the top mildly suggested beyond Holtzman’s dialogue. There’s no sense of stadiums, glitzy concert halls, the quaint but historic Ryman Auditorium, swanky clubs that tells us Jenny is the darling of the day and selling out the choicest venues. Doing so would add realism to the plot and make some coming scenes more poignant and dramatic.
Mounting a new show is always exciting, and the resourceful Jackson Gay is lucky in her cast.
Jackie Burns has immediate leading lady shine as Jenny. Her entrance in the production could be a tad slyer with some indication of time elapsed between leaving Tupelo and owning Nashville, but Burns makes you instantly believe she is the performer to watch even if you think Jenny remains confined to honky tonks, fire halls, and roadside bars.
Burns, as is her habit from every show I’ve seen her in, makes the stage hers and establishes Jenny as the focal character, the one from which any drama springs, even when Anna Grace is causing the upheavals.
Burns has a star’s command when she does Jenny’s numbers. Another thing Gay and the writers can work on is better defining when Jenny is singing to convey an emotion to the “Hard Road” audience and when she is performing before Jenny’s fictional audience (representational vs. presentational).
She also paces dramatic scenes affectingly so you develop a feeling for Jenny that is deeper than for any character.
Elizabeth Teeter as Anna Grace is such a strong singer, you hear immediately the link between her, Jenny, and their mother, Linnell.
Teeter can go toe-to-toe with Burns in dramatic moments. Some of “Hard Road’s” best sequences are when Jenny and Anna Grace collide.
Marcus Gladney, Jr. connects so well with Teeter, he gives credence to the characters’ relationship offstage and makes for some wonderful harmony in musical numbers.
Leah Hocking shows from where her daughters derive their spunk and vocal prowess. Jerry Dixon, always strong, is often a credible voice of reason and knows how to deliver a joke. J. Robert Spencer finds the perfect tone as a loving father, tongue-lashed husband, and man who just wants some peace with his bourbon and music. Nathaniel Hackmann does well as the businessman who is the hero or villain depending on the day. Cecilia Trippiedi makes her mark introducing us to Jenny’s mystique. Bryan Fenkart and Alec Ludacka are spot on playing the older and younger versions of Jenny’s first love and eventual partner.
Barroom table legs made from guitar necks shows the wit of Riw Rakkulchon’s all-purpose set. Vanessa Leuck finds the personality in all the characters’ costumes. Jeff Sherwood’s sound design keeps the score intelligible and well modulated.
Hard Road to Heaven, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 South Main Street, New Hope, Pennsylvania. Through Sunday, March 23. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. $32 to $72. www.bcptheater.org or 215-862-2121.
