We're still in the epoch of the Industrial Revolution. The primacy of the United States among world powers was founded on it. And yet from the first appearance of steam engines, a popular theme in American art and literature has been man vs. machine. We distrust our creations, and with good reason. In folklore the legend that started it all--without which The Terminator and A.I. wouldn't exist--is of course the story of John Henry, the man who beat the drill through the mountain, winning the competition but losing his life. It's a legend that captures the profound confusion in our feelings about technology, at once cynical and inspirational. But how do you dramatize a tall tale that's so ingrained in our psyches?
Writer Leon Martell and composer Penka Kouneva have avoided the question altogether. Instead of dramatizing the John Henry story, they've turned their attention to Henry's partner, the shaker--the man who turned the steel rod that Henry hit with his mighty hammer. After all, the shaker played a part in this great battle as well, right?
It's a bold idea, but, like most of this show, it's a choice that is never fully committed to. We get Willy the shaker's story, along with too little of John Henry's, along with some of Zach's, John Henry's last shaker, who was killed when a bad steel rod broke under Henry's blow. The result is a musical that never really finds its footing in terms of story, and likewise is scattershot in tone, style, and theme--sometimes ironic, often sentimental, occasionally refreshingly modern in its choreography and staging, but just as frequently conventional and baldly sappy in its lyrics and music.
The moments that work in the show are the short, percussive numbers, such as the opener--The Tunnel Song--in which the workers of the Big Bend Tunnel use their boots and voices to fill the theatre with the rhythmic noise and movement of their dark workplace. Credit Ameenah Kaplan's Stomp-like choreography and musical director David O's creative orchestration. "This Hammer" and "Like a Statue" survive on the sheer ability and impressively dead-on casting of the huge (and hugely talented) Michael A. Shepperd as Henry. Indeed the performers overall are gifted and game for the challenge, but when strapped with such undramatic, unmelodic, and cliched songs as "Bring My Lover Boy Home"--angel women welcoming dead shaker Zach to the Other Side--they don't have much to sink their teeth into. Willy, who usurps John Henry's place at the center of this tale, is, curiously, barely fleshed out in the show, despite flashes of backstory and numerous solo numbers. However, Randy Guiaya's earnest, heartfelt performance can't be to blame.
In terms of design and pace, director Wendy McClellan's talents are evident. This Oasis Theatre Company production clips along, allows the proper space for the emotional chords to be struck--though they rarely are--and even manages to creatively dramatize certain moments that would otherwise have come off as particularly clunky in less skilled hands. But the story just isn't there to support this endeavor. And with a story as inherently dramatic and proven as John Henry's, that's surprising.