The music is lush and filled with longing, but the lyrics are not as consistently successful. She is far more physically contained in 1945, but loses none of her power. An unbridled zest for living infuses her younger self with a spunky energy that keeps her practically bouncing across the stage. Her body is entirely different in 1923 than in 1945. But Cusack is the true marvel that makes these segues so easy. I’m not certain that its valise-like plot device is meant to invoke The Importance of Being Earnest, but Bright Star certainly takes a darker turn, and creates its own universe successfully.ĭirector Walter Bobbie takes us effortlessly and inventively between the time periods, using stop and go motion, even a “rewind” effect, and whimsical suggestions of transportation. There’s something sweet and satisfying about knowing where you’re headed, and this tangled family tale does have some surprises along the way. I won’t say exactly where the story of two star-crossed lovers and their lost child takes us, but if you don’t see it coming a mile away, you’re not paying attention. ![]() He cluelessly leaves behind Margo (Maddie Shea Baldwin), the girl he grew up with who has come to love him without ever putting it into words, and heads for Asheville. Billy has dreams of becoming a writer, and publishing stories in the well-respected Southern literary journal that Alice Murphy famously edits. Shively), who has returned from the war only to find his Daddy Cane (David Atkinson) grieving the loss of his wife, Billy’s mother. When greeted by a young writer with, “You must be Miss Murphy,” her response is, “I don’t know that I have to be, but I am.” The writer is Billy Cane (A.J. She gets pregnant with Jimmy Ray’s baby, and his rich daddy, Mayor Josiah Dobbs (Jeff Austin) is appalled, willing to go to any lengths to stop his son from being “trapped” into marriage, and Alice and Jimmy Ray’s child is taken from them.īy 1945, Alice has become the kind of sophisticated, brittle editor that would have been played by Katherine Hepburn or Bette Davis. But in 1923, she is a small-town girl with a wise soul, a smart mouth, and a deep love for Jimmy Ray Dobbs (Patrick Cummings), the son of a wealthy produce tycoon and town mayor.Īlice’s straight-laced parents, Daddy and Mama Murphy (Stephen Lee Anderson and Allison Briner Dardenne) believe they should have brought her up more strictly, but perhaps if they had, it would have only hastened her departure from the tiny town of Zebulon, leading her to explore her passion for literature even earlier. The opening number gives us Alice Murphy (Cusack) in 1945. ![]() ![]() The story is simple, yet its narrative construction is not. It swings between 19, and features a bluegrass score by Martin and Brickell, including songs originally written and recorded by Brickell and released on earlier albums. This romantic, nostalgic show is set in North Carolina. Cusack has been on a multi-year journey with Bright Star, since the Steve Martin/Edie Brickell musical began in a 2013 workshop by the New York Stage and Film at the Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College, had its world premiere in 2014 at the Old Globe in San Diego, then, in a much-rewritten version, opened at the Kennedy Center in 2015, and then went to Broadway in 2016 for a run that turned out to be shorter than most of the theater community expected, and far shorter than its many fans had hoped. She uses her whole self-physically, emotionally, vocally-to open herself to the audience, holding every last one of us in her loving arms.
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