It is incredibly heartening that a now-classic young adult novel, written by a teenager for teenagers, set in the 1960s, that has been adapted for film and television, provides the source material for a multiple Tony-Award-winning musical (including Best New Musical), the first profitable new Broadway musical to open since 2022.
“The Outsiders” first national tour opened its run in Grand Rapids last night to a grateful audience who got to experience the buzz about this 2023 folk-rock inflected musical shot through with teen angst (that has nothing to do with AI or too much screen time or global warming) and violence made artful.
It’s almost quaint to revisit this beloved tale that feels a bit like “Romeo and Juliet” or “West Side Story” without the romance, to experience the confusing heartbreak of youth, these orphaned teenagers who find belonging with each other but are alienated by their families and their community that treats them like pariahs.
Set in Tulsa, Okla., in 1967, the story is told in first-person by 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis (Christian Arredondo), a member of TheGreasers gang, from the wrong side of the tracks, a Paul Newman obsessed film buff with the heart of a poet, who’s writing the tale we’re being told, pronouncing at one point that “it’s hard to write the story when the story is writing me."
He tells us about the town and his conflict in country-influenced songs and introduces the central characters: his brothers, Darrel (Travis Roy Rogers), who’s overburdened as a father figure, and Sodapop (Corbin Drew Ross), who provides some forced comic relief amid the melodrama; his best friend Johnny Cade (Seth Ajani), who’s torn apart by his father’s brutality toward his mother; Dallas Winston (Tyler Jordan Wesley), the alpha of The Greasers, who’s done jail time; and Cherry Valance (Gina Gagliano), girlfriend of the rival gang, The Socs (short for socialites), leader, who has a soft spot for Ponyboy but who also can’t break free of expectations.
No one, it seems, can break free of their status, defined by class and race. Ponyboy’s flirtations with Cherry rankle her boyfriend and move a group of Socs to attack. An act of self defense causes Ponyboy and Johnny to flee. A fire, acts of heroism, and injuries ensue. Everyone gears up for a hotly-anticipated rumble in the name of justice, and after an extraordinary fight, tragedy begets tragedy.
The musical is true to both the novel and the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola film, though where the film is exceedingly minimal in character development and highlighting apex moments, the musical maximizes both, sometimes to a fault.
It takes all of Act I to get to the inciting incident, though with terrific sensory interest. They sing and stomp with great muscularity and literally kick up synthetic rubber granules that fly into the front rows. Period cars and their headlights are part of the set, one doubling as a bed, and tractor tires appear and disappear with bold flash lighting, also functioning as a fountain, a crucial site of violence.
The high-valence moments of violence propel the plot (book by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine) and are milked for all they’re worth, particularly with powerful, acrobatic choreography by Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman. The apex rumble in Act II is an astonishing achievement in which the full stage of actors dance/fight under pouring rain, their bodies soaked and destroyed beautifully, right before our eyes.
Director Danya Taymor creates inventive ways for this action-driven story to unfold on stage, and the stagecraft is often astounding. The scenography by AMP featuring Tatiana Kahvegian is gritty and dramatic, and special effects from Jeremy Chernick and Lillis Meeth in conjunction with lights from Brian MacDevitt, projections from Hana S. Kim, and sound by Cody Spencer produce astounding images and spaces that make the most of the drama that would be relentless were it not punctuated by sleepy ballads.
The largely pretty, Americana score by folk-rock band Jamestown Revival and Justin Levine is filled with mostly forgettable melodies though sung beautifully by this cast and performed brightly by the live orchestra conducted by Remy Kurs.
It’s a wonderful feat to have created something new out of something so well worn, and to have transformed it in a way that appeals to its audience. Though it’s heavy handed in its attempts to pull at the heart strings and without the structural integrity to fully support the emotion it aims to evoke, “The Outsiders” successfully brings in an audience Broadway really needs to attract, telling a story that has stood the test of time, using remarkable stagecraft to create a uniquely sensory and action-driven musical.
The Outsiders
Broadway Grand Rapids @ DeVos Performance Hall
June 9-14
https://grandrapids.broadway.com/
