Seattle Repertory Bluegrass

We were really looking forward to Seattle Rep's Fire on the Mountain last night, in part because it's an Appalachian coal mining thing and we love the Steven Segal movie Fire Down Below based on the same. Yes, we know, it's an indication of some serious flaw in our cultural map if upon hearing "Appalachian coal mining" we respond with "Steven Segal!" Maybe we fixed it last night. Maybe the next time we hear "Appalachian coal mining" we'll respond with "Fire on the Mountain at the Seattle Repertory Theater through March 24!" All we remember from Segal's version is that he saves some mining town and gets the girl through strength of body and character. Seattle Rep's production does a much better job of communicating the blatant rape of culture, people and land of the southern mountains that was (and is) perpetrated by the coal mines. They cover the low wages, black lung, cave-ins, busted families, ruined earth, the unions, strip mining, flight to the cities, the end of agrarian society, man's inability to confront death without a fistful of morphine, etc, all via song. The black and white photographs of Appalachian miners that were projected on large screens behind the musicians were a great addition, although none of the photos depicted a greasy-haired man with a little paunch righteously delivering a roundhouse to the face of a one-dimensional bad guy.

The other reason we were looking forward to Fire on the Mountain was that it's a musical with Bluegrass as its base. There was also some blues (these are the same Repertory alumni who brought It Ain't Nothin But the Blues to the stage a few years ago) and some gospel and some drum and bass (not really), but it was mostly bluegrass-y. We missed Wintergrass in Tacoma last weekend, and we shouldn't have. We would have loved it. As a handy replacement, though, here we have Fire on the Mountain this week. We took our seats a few minutes before it kicked off and drooled over the impressive array of instruments set up on stage. Guitars, violins, mandolins, banjos, a bunch of stuff we don't know the proper name of--it looked promising. Few of the songs really roused us, however, even in the sucker-for-anything state we were in. Not that the musicians weren't skilled or the songs weren't well-crafted, because they were. They just seemed a little confined by the show. We'd love to see these guys share a small bar stage somewhere where they could really let rip, but here they came off as kind of scripted and virtuosity apparently wasn't in the book. Such is the nature of the well-instrumented musical, we guess. The exception was Molly Andrews who transcended the show/stage/theater/planet Earth with her badass vocal stylings. We're buying her CD. We're thinking of following her around the country like people used to follow the Dead. On your way into the Rep for this show you'll see a guy camped out along Mercer in a tie-dyed shirt selling mushroom tea or Budweisers by the can or something. That'll be Seattlest. A fan is born.