Broadway at TPAC
The Outsiders are In
If you never had The Outsiders appear in your reading list, the plot takes place over a short period of time. It happens in Tulsa in the late 1960’s, with a strict social caste between east and west sides of the train tracks, the Greasers and the Socs (short for Socials, as in socialites). The Socs are almost uniformly privileged, arrogant, and cruel to their disadvantaged teenage peers. Ponyboy is a teenage orphan living with his two older brothers on the rough side of town. His friends are all Greasers, children of abuse and trauma. His best friend is Johnny, and when Ponyboy is getting ruthlessly beaten and drowned by Socs for talking with a Soc’s girlfriend, Johnny rushes to his rescue with a knife, and everything changes.
Interestingly, while there are countless prodigies in mathematics and music, literature is an area that has very few. If your story is about people, it usually requires you to have experienced a certain amount of life before you can write about it accurately or compellingly. The Outsiders was published by S. E. Hinton when she was 18. She said that she did the majority of the work on her book in junior year of high school, “the year I made a D in creative writing.” It’s incredibly rare for our culture to take a teenage girl seriously, especially when writing about teenage boys.
While still-living S. E. Hinton’s book is a relatively young classic (published in 1967), I attended the musical adaptation of The Outsiders wondering whether it would be a corporate manufacture or additional interaction with a beloved text. It is the second adaptation of the book and it’s a significantly better one than the 1983 film The Outsiders by Francis Ford Coppola. The film, while comedically full of unknown future superstars like Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze, is charmless and wooden, turning the emotional highpoints into melodrama. The book is written from a first-person perspective with much characterization, and the film almost completely avoids narration. The musical adaptation follows the book more closely in this regard, Ponyboy speaking directly to the audience, and we hear not only his thoughts, but those of other characters: one benefit of musicals is the ability to fluidly hear the inner thoughts of many characters with the emotive power of melody and harmony.
Obviously the biggest difference between the show and the book and the film is the music, which I really enjoyed. I try to go into musicals with fresh ears, having never heard the soundtrack or having not listened to it in a while. The music is excellent, by the band Jamestown Revival and Justin Levine. The full house the night I attended had a flurry of excitement before each of the big songs was about to begin. It’s not infrequent for a Broadway at TPAC show to have good balance but to be far too loud for the space. This show has the perfect balance and volume for the space, allowing all the high notes and musical climaxes to soar without auditory discomfort. There are a few tracks that deliberately capture some of the sound and style of the 1960’s, but the rest feel more timeless with a Western twist to standard Broadway instrumentation. Several songs are simply acoustic guitar and voice, which besides sounding amazing is a marvelous way to imply intimacy through scoring. The two-and-a-half-hour show has about an hour of its runtime spent in song, equally dispersed across the two acts. The lyrics are the best sort, telling the story, each song continuing plot or developing character, so I never sat there hoping a song would end so that the plot could move forward. Harmony is used to great advantage, beautiful and evocative word-painting, emphasizing the friendship between Ponyboy and Johnny in “Death’s at My Door,” and “Stay Gold.” As I relistened to the soundtrack writing this review, I was happy to find that the soundtrack improves upon relistening. And a note to any students reading this: since the bones of the plot are shown through the songs, listening to the album would be a much better study-aid than an AI summary, and a lot more fun, too.
The choreography is fantastic, taking advantage of the youth of its cast, who fling themselves across the stage, on and off of set pieces, flipping and jumping over each other, with the energy and power restricted to the young. The movement isn’t just highly entertaining, but specifically apt for these teenage boys, revealing the vibrancy within them that cries out for a meaningful outlet. The dancing is great throughout the show, but the most thrilling moment is in the second act, during the fight between the Greasers and the Socs. It takes place in the rain: real water pours from above, with projections and beams of headlights emphasizing it. The splash of water accentuates each punch, and the crowd’s dance has highly stylised movements and flashes of lighting. The already fantastic music and choreography is elevated by the artificial downpour, and even if the rest of the show hadn’t been great, it would have been worth the ticket just to experience the moment. Happily, the rest of the show is great. The few special effects required for the story are top-tier: a fire, simulated drowning, flashes of light.
The entire cast impressed me: read the cast list, and you know they’re good. I’ll single out the main characters. It has to be special for Nashville native Nolan White to perform in TPAC in the starring role of Ponyboy. He has charm and a believable rough side, and an incredible and pitch-perfect voice. His talented co-star, Bonale Fambrini, who plays Johnny, is tear-jerking as the sweet and traumatised boy, and his beautiful tone gives his songs special emotional hit. Tyler Jordan Wesley as Dallas somehow makes the rough-and-tumble character suave, without destroying his hint of danger, and his full voice is impressive. Emma Hearn gives Cherry a relatable kindness and has a beautiful voice.
I loved this show. It takes full advantage of its music, choreography, and cast. You should see it, and move quickly, because there are hardly any seats remaining. Go to TPAC’s website for tickets and more information, and here for more information about their North American Tour.
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A Nashville native and MTSU graduate, Grace Krenz is a reader, a writer, and an arts enthusiast. She lives in Nashville with her husband and two children.
