ROLLING THUNDER
Book by Bryce Hallett
Arrangements and Orchestrations by
Chong Lim & Sonny Paladino
Directed by Kenneth Ferrone
New World Stages
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
Continuing on from my review of Call Me Izzy (consider reading its intro first, if you haven’t yet), the second show I want to examine in the light of been there, seen that is the rock opera Rolling Thunder (apparently aka Rolling Thunder: Vientnam and Rolling Thunder VNM), an import from Australia.
Per the subtitle, it’s a rock “journey”—a multi-media concert with continuity. The concert part (arrangements and orchestrations by Chong Lim and Sonny Paladino) is a compendium of popular songs from the Vietnam War era. The continuity (book by Bryce Hallett) follows the trajectory of three draftees (Drew Baker, Justin Matthew Sargeant, Daniel Yearwood), from their lives interrupted by the call to service, through their experiences in training and battle, to the return home of any who may survive. There’s the childhood sweetheart and fiancé one of them has had to leave behind (Cassadee Pope); and a number of supporting, “back home” and culturally notable characters are played by a protean pair of role-switching actors (the females: Courtnee Carter, the males: Deon’te Goodman). The characters tend to narrate their own stories and even interact in the past tense, as if we’re hearing the authentic text of actual journals, documentary style; sustained monologues being ruminations, experiential anecdotes or letters. The band is onstage.
The performers are all admirable actor-singers, skilled at conveying human nuance within the kind of kamikaze-hit broad-strokes the scenes and songs mandate; the music department offers equivalent top notch delivery. And as concert stagings go, the direction of Kenneth Ferrone is standard but absolutely in the groove.
It’s just that none of this is even a little bit fresh. Rolling Thunder may be a wartime jukebox show, but a jukebox show it is. And self-narration? Didn’t that have its heyday half a century ago when the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby interwove the device with actual scenes? With several notable plays by Brian Friel? It’s a device that can bring you closer to a character’s soul eventually, but that’s a seduction requiring stillness and shared concentration between audience and performer. Within the wham-bam hits of a concert, even the heartbreak of war are reduced to a place-marker for pathos rather than something that’s actually moving.
And from the description above, if I were to say which soldier doesn’t make it home, would you even consider it a spoiler?
If Call Me Izzy demonstrates how one might give the familiar the freshest coat of paint possible, Rolling Thunder demonstrates—seems to demonstrate—that despite an ostensible connection to musical and wartime history, its trope-after-trope execution is unconnected to—or unconcerned with—the decades of pop culture of which it is just a facile distillation.
Important postscript: I’m not sure how much this will matter to younger audiences. The show was a big hit in Australia, touring very successfully; and at the performance I attended, audience enthusiasm for the experience was unbdeniable. But there are cases where a more seasoned viewer may observe, or even share the energy, of a performance gestalt, and still walk away not humming, but ho-humming.
Gauge your attendance accordingly.