Playwright: music by Woody Guthrie,
arrangements by Jeff Waxman,
book by Peter Glazer
At: Blindfaith Theatre
at the Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln
Phone: 773-871-3000; $18-$20
Runs through: July 20
Whether you know it or not, you've heard—and maybe even sung—a song by Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. In grade school, at summer camp, on a picnic or at a Pride rally, you have almost assuredly experienced one of the songs now so much a part of our nation's heritage that it comes as a surprise to most people when reminded of their lone composer, who died in 1967 at the age of 55.
There's a reason, however, why this revue is titled Woody Guthrie's American song. Audiences who dismiss its selection of material as imperfect biodrama mistake author Peter Glazer's mission, which is not to glorify a man, but a culture. Guthrie himself shrugged off credit for his 'compositions,' declaring them to be mere reflections of observations gathered on his 'roams and rambles' among the rural population displaced by the Great Depression. ( It's easy nowadays to equate 'migrant' workers with foreign-born immigrants, forgetting a time when long-entrenched American citizens toiled in strangers' fields, living in tents or trailers before moving on to the next harvest. Pay attention—you may soon see them again. )
So whether our guide is enlightening us to life in the California camps with 'End of My Line,' or New York's Bowery with a merry 'Hard, Ain't It Hard,' the emotion evoked is the gloomy despair of the refugee followed by a grim determination to endure. For every lament like 'Deportee,''Nine Hundred Miles' or 'I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore,' we get flashes of humor, such as the satirical 'If You Ain't Got The Do-Re-Mi' and of faith in a better world to come—as with the refrain to 'Worried Man,' which declares defiantly, 'I'm worried now/but I won't be worried long.'
Blindfaith Theatre's decision to house its production in the cozy downstairs studio at the Greenhouse may have been rooted in budgetary concerns, but the intimacy of the quarters facilitates the empathy generated by the ensemble of speaking characters who also sing and play their own guitars—with additional heft contributed by four auxiliary instrumentalists—our freight-train troubadour's battered Stella six-string caroling as brightly as the Guilds and Martins kept wisely in the background by director Nicolas Minas and music director Shaun Whitley. By the time we are invited to join them ( in a chorus of 'Union Maid' ) , most playgoers will have already done so much earlier.
