Theater Review - 'Ghost Brothers of Darkland County’: Fraternal strife at center of unconventional musicalby Curtis Schieber
“This is the oldest story in the world,” says the Zydeco Cowboy (Jesse Lenat) at the opening of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a unique music and theater production that touched down in the Palace Theatre last night.
He was talking about the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, but given the work’s creators — novelist Stephen King, singer-songwriter John Mellencamp and songwriter-producer T-Bone Burnett — it was a foregone conclusion that the yarn would tilt to the dark side.
Sure enough, Satan — or “The Shape,” as he was called —appeared for the first full song, That’s Me. As delivered by singer Jake LaBotz, he was cocky, tattooed and the harbinger of constant bad news. “I always win,” he sang merrily but full of ice.
Ghost Brothers was first heard as a song cycle with a narrative thread, released this summer and performed by the likes of Elvis Costello, Neko Case, Dave and Phil Alvin, Sheryl Crow, Kris Kristofferson, Taj Mahal and Rosanne Cash. King created the libretto for the stage show as well as the overall shape of the story. If the recording was a bit vague on the narrative line, the show was a bit thin on the music.
From the first, the musical performances on record more surely stood on their own than those last night. Costello opened the collection with a Beelzebub as much showy snake-oil salesman as evil agent. By the end of the evening’s drama, though, LaBotz created a seething but seductive face of evil.
The story revolves around two contemporary brothers, Frank and Drake McCandless (Lucas Kavner and Joe Tippett, respectively). Drake is the high-school idol, Frank, the nerd. Drake’s longtime girlfriend Anna (Kylie Brown) has begun an affair with Frank as the story unfolds.
The triangle just happens to mirror the tragic relationship decades ago between the brothers of the two boys’ dad, Joe: Jack (Peter Albrink) and Andy (Travis Smith). The show presents the parallel destiny of two pairs of brothers, and it takes much of the first act to sort out all the time frames and family histories.
By the time it all becomes clear, though, so does the fact that this is all about Joe, just 10 when the first brothers met their demise. Joe’s challenge is to come clean 40 years later about the circumstances of their death in order to save his two battling sons and, more important, himself.
Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well for any of the principals. Nonetheless, unlike the recording, the stage presentation finally kowtows to convention by ending in a cast singalong that finds a silver thread.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2013/10/23/theater-review-ghost-brothers.html
