Sunday, January 17, 1999
Playhouse rattles with 'Thunder'
Playwright Glover mixes fable of the South with original blues tunes
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Get ready to put your hands together, and put them together again and again. In no time you'll be clapping along with a show that is Southern myth and blues and all that is hip.
Thunder Knocking on the Door is Keith Glover's “bluesical” fable about Marvell Thunder, an incarnation of the age-old supernatural trickster (a k a imp, a k a shapeshifter) set “once upon a time in 1966.” It opens Tuesday at Playhouse in the Park.
That's not all it's about. Thunder is about a journey, too.
The journey is its development over the past two years at a half-dozen regional theaters across the United States. If its development is culminating at the Playhouse, that doesn't mean the journey ends here. There are a world of possibilities, including Broadway.
Thunder's cross-country evolution — adding, subtracting, re-evaluating, polishing always in a living production in front of an audience — says a lot about the nature of the non-profit regional theater movement at its best, says Playhouse producing artistic director Ed Stern. “It says the process is what's important, as much as the product. You can't stint on the process.”
The willingness of so many theaters to be a part of Thunder's development “confirms that we want the play to get better and better.”
“It's the penultimate,” Mr. Glover says, “to go from theater to theater to theater to theater.”
Guitar man
The fable and the journey start in Alabama.
The fable is the story of two guitars left by the late Jaguar Dupree to his twin children, Glory and Jaguar Jr.
Years before at a crossroads, old Jaguar had won a guitar-playing contest against a certain trickster (Marvell Thunder), or so the story goes. Now the trickster needs to win the guitars back or lose his magic, his immortality.
Thunder had no problem with Jaguar Jr.; he abandoned blues for more lucrative rock 'n' roll. But Glory, who has lost her sight, is true to the blues. Thunder offers to return her sight if she'll play against him, and she wins. They are to have their guitar duel “where the two roads meet.”
Pause for a guitar riff, in a minor key.
Now for the journey of Thunder and Mr. Glover, back in Cincinnati two years after the premiere of In Walks Ed at the Playhouse.
The journey started in Bessemer, Ala., where 32-year-old Mr. Glover was born and where the action in Thunder plays out.
The playcame about because a regional theater in Alabama, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, came looking for Mr. Glover (who had moved to New York) back in 1995 and said “write for us.”
Festival artistic director Kent Thompson had seen another of young Mr. Glover's epic myths, Coming of the Hurricane, in Denver.
“He had a strong and theatrical voice,” Mr. Thompson says. “He was writing about things more magical and theatrical than other writers.”
The festival's Southern Writers Project commissions a few works each year. Mr. Thompson searched out Mr. Glover and discovered, to his happy surprise, that Mr. Glover had spent some of his childhood in Alabama. A perfect fit for the project.
When they talked, Mr. Glover had only an idea.
“I always wanted to write a play about the blues,” Mr. Glover says. “There's something about that music that uplifts you. It's working. It's there. I'd never seen it in theater before, and I wanted to see it.”
Suburban South
For Keith Glover, there is perfect communion, perfect balance between music and text. The dialogue is musical. The dramatic action is given its momentum by the music.
“I wasn't trying to make "musical theater,'” he says. “The American musical — what is that template? The book is this, the songs do that. People get confounded by rules. Who wrote these rules?”
Books to musicals can be weak, he points out, “and there's a reason. Books can be an afterthought.”
He wanted to create a hybrid.
He also wanted to break through the “trap” of what people believe African-American is supposed to be. Artists of earlier generations — Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Romare Bearden, August Wilson — “they had a heavy folk vibe,” says Mr. Glover, “and that's cool” but it's not his vibe.
When Gen-Xer Mr. Glover would say he was writing about the South, “People say, "Oh, the South. Rural.' No, Alabama in 1966 was suburban.
“They're wondering where are the overalls; I was living Donna Reed. Our families wanted what they saw on TV. My mama had beautiful hair, the house, the Donna Reed skirt. I wanted to be true to that world.”
During a key period of Thunder's early development, Mr. Glover was an expectant father. He knew he didn't want to write a folk tale; he wanted to write a fairy tale for his child.
“I was having a child and I realized there was something so dark about the wonderful stories I had grown up with, but they had no color. I remember Lesley Ann Warren in Cinderella and digging that.
“I wanted to filter all that through what I am.”
Musician's son
Mr. Glover is the blues.
“I'm not coming to this music second-hand,” he says. “I'm the son of a jazz musician, and you can't play jazz till you know your blues.
“We didn't call it "blues.' We called it our music.” But Mr. Glover's musical references are eclectic. “I dug me some Charley Pride, I dug me some Johnny Cash, Earth, Wind and Fire, Johnnie Taylor.”
Mr. Glover wrote the core of Thunder in three weeks. It went through readings and workshops at the festival. Early on, a dramaturge friend at Connecticut's Hartford Stage hooked Mr. Glover up with composer Keb' Mo'. Author and composer had been on stage as actor and musician, respectively, in back-to-back shows at the theater.
Keb' Mo' had an album coming out, Just Like You, whichwent on to win a Grammy for contemporary blues. He told Mr. Glover to pick up a copy and they'd talk. Mr. Glover picked it up and said, “Wow.”
They talked, but commitments kept Keb' Mo' from taking the festival gig, so the original Thunder was plugged with blues standards.
Fine tuning
Dallas Theater Center invited Thunder's original director back to do another play. He told them he'd rather repeat Thunder. They said fine, and its regional life continued in Dallas and Baltimore. Then Thunder won the 1997 American theater critics award for best new play.
Yale Rep in New Haven, Conn., did the next production in April 1997. Standards were replaced primarily by material already released by Keb' Mo' and the artists worked off-stage for the summer.
Mr. Glover headed for Chicago in October '97 to “a small, small, small theater” for a showcase production that he staged himself. He was looking to create perfect balance of story and song. He became a regular visitor at the Checkerboard Lounge “where Jaguar had been hanging.”
Keb' Mo' brought in original music. Mr. Glover picked up Anderson Edwards as musical director, then co-composer. Script revisions invited more songs. They completed the score.
If the original Thunder was a play with music, the Thunder that arrived at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theatre in winter of 1998 was a full-fledged musical play. Over its two-year development, the completed original score almost doubled to 14 numbers. Again Mr. Glover handed off to another director.
Mr. Stern had already picked Thunder for the 1998-99 Playhouse season and went to the Guthrie opening night. He bumped into Ken Roberson, who had just directed A Brief History of White Music in the Shelterhouse.
“He said he was the choreographer,” Mr. Stern says, laughing. “We hadn't budgeted for a choreographer. I looked at the program and there were 14 musical numbers. The Guthrie had marketed it as a straight play, but it just kept growing.”
Taking control
Mr. Glover never was completely happy with other directors' stagings, which to his eyes favored either the music or the play but never blended them as was his vision. He signed on to direct at the Playhouse, as he had with In Walks Ed.
When Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., wanted a production, Mr. Glover laid down the rules: He would direct, they would collaborate with the Playhouse. Arena signed on as co-producer last spring.
“The planets were aligning,” Mr. Glover says.
Then came the cast. Terry Burrell signed on from the London production of Showboat. Kevin Morrow came from The Scarlet Pimpernel on Broadway. (“He left a running show!” marvels Mr. Glover). Doug Eskew was in Cats, recording artist Marva Hicks is fresh from her latest tour.
“The first day of rehearsal, I told the cast, "If Broadway is the place you want to go, we can make Broadway wherever we are.'”
There were more changes. Four new songs came in (as replacements and additions), there was a new set design by Broadway vet David Gallo (who designed In Walks Ed and Sweeney Todd for Playhouse.)
Thunder opened on Nov. 6 at the Arena, to killer reviews (Washington Post: ... has the enchantment of a fairy tale, the fascination of a dream and the kick of a mule.” Washington Times: “a rollicking, intoxicating "bluesical' that demonstrates the power of music to free the soul.”)
Broadway producers started showing up. Nothing signed, sealed and delivered — yet.
Mr. Glover and company are back in rehearsal, making one last revision for the Playhouse run. (A three-minute scene was pulled from the middle to start the show.)
A Playhouse loyalist since In Walks Ed, Mr. Glover says, “I want to give Cincinnati the best show ever. And it wasn't that shabby to begin with.”
IF YOU GO
• What: Thunder Knocking on the Door.
• When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday thereafter, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 19.
• Where: Marx Theatre, Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park.
• Tickets: Tickets $28-$40; Tuesday and Wednesday previews $25. Any unreserved tickets half-price day of show purchased at Playhouse box office or PNC Bank Tower Tix booth in Tower Place Mall between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.
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