Review: Rolling Thunder Looks at the Vietnam War Through the Music of the ’60s

The music of the 1960s, much of it coming in the form of songs of revolution, can’t be separated from the defiant protests that were held against the Vietnam War. Remembering and honoring those Americans who fought in that war and those who waited agonizing days for the return of their loved ones, many of whom never came home, is the concept behind Rolling Thunder: A Rock Journey, now running at New World Stages.

Book writer Bryce Hallett and music director Sonny Paladino have chosen some of the best-known songs of the era and threaded them together with a story line based on actual letters and interviews. On its face, Rolling Thunder (the title is a reference to the aerial bombardment campaign on North Vietnam that began 60 years ago) resembles a jukebox musical, but Hallett’s book lacks a plot strong enough to ditch the feeling that this would have been better off as a straight-up rock concert. Great music has a way of telling its own story.

Hallett’s characters are “composites of real-life people” (according to the program), and they speak directly to the audience for most of the show. We meet Johnny (Drew Becker) and Tommy (Justin Matthew Sargent), two young men who enlist in the army with romantic notions of going off to war to find adventure, only to discover horror at every turn. Andy (Daniel Yearwood) has been drafted and reluctantly puts on the uniform while Jimi (Deon’te Goodman) stays home to protest. At home, Tommy’s girlfriend Linda (Cassadee Pope) and Andy’s mother (Courtnee Carter) write letters in painful anticipation of embracing their boys again.

Throughout the loosely plotted two-hour show, director Kenneth Ferrone gives us a full-on rock concert with iconic songs like “Born to Be Wild,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Eve of Destruction,” and “War” (Paladino and Chong Lim did the arrangements and orchestrations for the show’s five-member band). Aurelien Budynek and Sherrod Barnes whale on their guitars, the cast delivers all the big vocals you could ask for, and the flashy lighting (by Jake DeGroot) and loud-and-clear sound design (by Mike Tracey) ramp up the energy, making the whole thing seem like it was designed for a much larger space.

That’s great for music lovers but not great for this musical, since that concert-like bigness makes Hallett’s book seem even smaller. His characters are recognizable archetypes of the era, but none of them are all that different from those we’ve seen elsewhere in films like Apocalypse Now and Platoon.

Far better at telling the story are Caite Hevner’s projections, which include newspaper headlines of the day, video footage of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, and authentic photos of soldiers in the field. Costume designer Andrea Lauer’s fringed hippie vests and Wilson Chin’s set, comprising old TVs that show us coverage of protests that erupted around the country, create the atmosphere of the times together with the music more effectively than manufactured monologues.

Still, Ferrone does generate moments of real emotion, especially when the cast reads letters from soldiers and family members that reveal their dreams and hopes for the future, all of which we know in hindsight will never be realized. And it’s impossible not to feel heartbreak and rage at the lives lost and left in ruin when we see thousands of names projected across the entire stage near the end as Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” (also recalling Platoon) plays in the background.

In that respect Rolling Thunder succeeds, and it’s a fitting tribute to heroes, past and present. The conflict in Vietnam ended 50 years ago this past April; too bad we still haven’t learned what war is good for.