I think we sometimes lose track of the fact that one of the primary duties of art is to tell the truth. Not just the prosaic truth of facts, figures and quotations but also the more profound truths that underlie the prosaic ones, truths that we may all understand at a level that precedes and surpasses the spoken or written word.
It’s a measure of its artistic success that Frank Wildhorn’s musical pageant The Civil War (which plays the Fox through this Sunday, March 25th) deals with both these truths. The facts are certainly there, projected on one of the two huge mobile scrims downstage and mid-stage: so many killed and wounded at this battle; headlines announcing secession; images of soldiers live, dying and dead. But The Civil War also reminds us of more basic truths: that all men are created equal, endowed with inalienable rights; that slavery is always vile and corrupts any society that tolerates it; and that we can admire individual acts of nobility while still acknowledging that they do not redeem a fundamentally ignoble cause. As the loads of delusional rubbish we’ve been hearing lately from neo-Confederate apologists and their cronies in high office indicate, some of us still haven’t quite absorbed these self-evident truths.
The Civil War isn’t a conventional book musical so much as a series of tableaux illustrating the progress of the war. Beginning with the black cast members reciting some of the ugly facts of slavery and ending with a prayer that the nation might heal itself (a prayer still not fully answered), The Civil War switches back and forth among the viewpoints of the North, the South and the slaves with a mix of solos, duets and rousing ensembles that give each side its due without losing sight of the fundamental moral issues that were behind the war. Gregory Boyd’s book -- which draws on sources as diverse as letters from soldiers, diaries, political polemics and even the poetry of Walt Whitman -- is even-handed, but not so much so that it lacks a point of view.
Composer Wildhorn and lyricist Jack Murphy craft songs that are so compelling and which delineate personalities and situations so clearly that despite the fact that the characters who sing them are all archetypes -- The Union Captain, The Confederate Captain, A Slave, A Soldier and so on -- they are immediately appealing and compelling. The variety of musical styles is also impressive, ranging from the African sound of “Peculiar Institution” (an ironic contradiction to the lyrics, which depict the denigration of slavery) to the Gospel influences of “Freedom’s Child” and “Someday” to the country sounds of “Old Gray Coat” and “Last Waltz for Dixie”. In lesser hands this might come across as something of a patchwork, but here it all fits together seamlessly.
Douglas W. Schmidt’s scenic design is deceptively simple. The band is placed upstage, in front of a backdrop depicting a ruined brick building. Above them is a wrought-iron platform and on either side two ruined columns suggesting a decayed plantation house. Those two huge scrims I mentioned earlier are raised and lowered to delineate playing spaces, with projections helping to set the scene or chart the course of the war with a mind-numbing tally of the dead and wounded at each battle. Smaller platforms are moved around as needed to create a campsite, an auction block, and so on. It’s simple but functional and makes scene changes quick and fluid. The costuming is a mix of plain modern dress with period coats or hats added as necessary.
The real heart of this production of The Civil War, however, is the cast. This is one of the most uniformly excellent collections of singers I have heard in years and since the cast is not a large one nearly everyone gets to shine. Larry Gatlin gets star billing as The Confederate Captain. The role perfectly suits gritty country twang and he’s believably noble in an ignoble cause. Matching him is Michael Lanning as The Union Captain, utterly convinced of the rightness of the Union side but heartsick at the hard decisions he must make. Both Lanning and Gatlin are vocally powerful and appropriately commanding on stage, a dynamic essential to the show’s drama.
Moses Braxton Jr., Keith Byron Kirk, David Jennings and Dawana Gudger-Richardson all shine in the songs depicting the harrowing lives and spiritual courage of the slaves. Braxton, in particular, has a bone-rattling basso that made his microphone seem largely irrelevant, and I was not surprised to discover afterwards that his background is mostly operatic. Nicolette Hart has beautiful moments as a nurse and (in “Missing You”) the wife of a doomed soldier and Royal Reed is touching as the dying soldier in “Tell My Father”.
There are many more wonderful performances in The Civil War, but this review has already gone on nearly as long as the war itself, so I’ll just apologize to the many other talented members in this cast who I have failed to mention individually and say that there’s not a weak link anywhere. This is a solid ensemble that fully deserved their opening night standing ovation.
The Civil War plays the Fox through this Sunday. It’s an intelligent and powerful show with a strong moral core, a combination that is increasingly rare these days. Go see it, and be reminded of the tragedy and glory of a war that, over a century and a half later, still resonates in America’s consciousness. Call 314-534-1111 or go to the Metrotix site for ticket information.