in Movin’ Out
(Photo © Joan Marcus)
Movin’ Out, which Twyla Tharp directed and choreographed to Billy Joel’s songbook, has moved out from Manhattan to 32 cities across the country. On May 10, when the 2005 Touring Broadway Award winners were announced, Movin’ Out was declared the best new musical and Tharp was named best choreographer. (She won the 2003 Tony Award in that category for the Broadway production.)
When you take a look at the road show — which is playing to understandably enthusiastic crowds at Philadelphia’s Merriam Theater through the end of the week — the reasons for the Touring Broadway win are as in-your-face as the rumbustious Billy Joel music. One explanation for the dance piece’s enormous appeal is the story of heartbreak and reconciliation that Tharp located in the semi-autobiographical material written by Joel during his “still rock and roll to me” years. Furthermore, Joel was chronicling an agitated slice of American history; he captured in song the damage that the Vietnam War caused the nation, the deep physical and psychological wounds that took a decade or three to heal.
Tharp got Joel’s often subliminal points and saw a way to make them even more pronounced. She plucked Brenda and Eddie and others from Joel’s lyrics, and made them the central figures in her plaintive saga. Eddie, a compulsive girl-chaser, alienates his fiancée Brenda just before enlisting in the military with pals James and Tony. James proposes to Judy and marries her but is killed in combat. Tony (who has begun seeing Brenda) and Eddie survive the war but not without suffering severe post-traumatic stress. Back from the battlefields, Eddie sinks into drugs and general debauchery; Tony has trouble reconnecting with Brenda; Judy mourns. Only after some time do these tormented figures face the future with some of the bright hope that they had as youngsters.
Although Tharp proved that she had an affinity for contemporary music when she mined the Beach Boys catalog for “Deuce Coupe” in 1973, she made quantum leaps with Movin’ Out. The storyline, which she famously took great efforts to refine during the show’s tryout engagement, is sophisticated, engaging, and gritty. Tharp has brought passion and compassion to her tale of what a controversial war can do to everyone touched by it. Moreover, she has drawn on the idiosyncratic choreographic style she developed over 35 years in building this masterpiece.
Tharp’s accomplishment loses its meaning if Movin’ Out isn’t danced well, but this isn’t something that audiences of the current touring production need to worry about. Among the dancers taking on assignments at last week’s Saturday matinee: Rasta Thomas was Eddie, Holly Cruikshank was Brenda, David Gomez was Tony, co-dance captain Julie Voshell was Judy, and Jason DePinto was James. (Thomas, Cruikshank, and Gomez split the eight-performance week down the middle with, respectively, Brendan King, Laurie Kanyok, and Corbin Popp.)
As Eddie, a cocky adolescent having problems figuring out who he is before he signs up to fight, Thomas is a compact dancer and a combustible actor. White-hot anger seems to fire his muscles; nothing stops him from giving everything he’s got in him, and some of his most amazing physical feats come late in the proceedings. This is an all-stops-pulled-out, no-Viagra-needed performance.
Gomez’s Tony is a contrasting creation of equal persuasion. The Movin’ Out characters are candidates for blue-collar lives, but Gomez finds the dignity of a boy raised in the streets who eventually brings maturity to loving and living. His execution with Holly Cruikshank of the astonishingly sexy “Shameless” pas de deux produces audible gasps from the audience. (Tharp can cajole dancers to be demure or libidinous on demand.) Cruikshank, who seems as tall as Gomez and possesses boundless energy, uses her height to show off her strong sense of line. Julie Voshell and Jason DePinto match their colleagues not only in their authoritative dancing but also in their acting.
On the raised bandstand, Matt Wilson — who shares his duties with Darren Holden — did the singing and energetic piano playing. He flatted on a few notes but generally brought a genuine, Billy Joel-type muscularity to his renditions. To the entire company’s credit, they performed at this particular matinee as if Tharp were in the house. (As it happened, she was.)
Anyone seeing a show on the road has the right to wonder how what they’re seeing differs, if at all, from the Broadway version. In Movin’ Out, there are a few trims here and there, but not in the two most important departments: the brilliance of Tharp’s work and the brilliance of the troupe, which has been snipped to 16. (That means one less couple.) The bandstand, which moves forward on Broadway, is now stationary; a couple of backdrops, which are a nice addition to the look of the show but not a necessity, are gone; and the jalopy that Eddie and pals use is now a battered but fabulous MG instead of a Mustang. Perhaps the biggest change is that, while the median age of the Broadway dancers is estimated to be over 30, the median age of the dancers on the road is under 30. Youthful enthusiasm pertains here, and that’s not a bad trade-off for seasoned terping.
Another question that might cross one’s mind is whether the show has dated at all. The answer is a qualified yes. When the production opened, its happy ending didn’t seem entirely earned; Eddie’s full recovery and rapprochement with his old chums felt more like wishful thinking than a likely outcome. Still, the shared societal memories that his experiences awakened were real, so Tharp’s ballet came across as hard-nosed reflection. But in 2005, with the Iraq war still raging, the harmony depicted at the end of Movin’ Out feels discordant. Even while watching the friends hugging one another at Tharp’s soaring finale, audience members who have relatives or friends in Baghdad or Basra might almost expect to see a line of soldiers on the march behind the celebrants. So far, this tour has played primarily to older subscribers; but if any show is likely to move younger audiences in, it’s Movin’ Out.
