Review: The Outsiders Becomes a Soggy Broadway Musical

It’s raining on Broadway. I’m not just talking about the 14 new shows pouring into theaters this month, but actual water falling onstage. It rains in The Notebook, as fans of the film (and wet Noah) expect. But it also rains next door in The Outsiders, the new musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s popular young adult novel. It’s almost like the Shuberts got a two-for-one deal and couldn’t pass it up.

The deluge arrives during the climactic rumble scene, perversely transforming this coming-of-age story about brotherhood and the gravitational pull of class into an Abercrombie & Fitch photoshoot. It adds nothing to the story and gives several of these tough (tuff?) boys the Sharon Stone wet look just in time for the show’s heartfelt conclusion. This may seem like a petty thing to highlight at the top of a review, but this expensive and superfluous scenic effect exemplifies everything that is wrong with The Outsiders.

For the record, there is plenty that is right. The score (by Justin Levine and Jamestown Revival’s Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) starts out especially strong with the rousing opener “Tulsa ’67,” which tells us everything we need to know about the time, place, and central conflict in this story about 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis (Brody Grant, affable but with a catch of sadness in his voice) and his gang of east side “greasers,” who regularly do battle with the rich “socs” from the west side of town.

Rick and Jeff Kuperman’s choreography is similarly evocative as these Tulsa boys kick up the Oklahoma soil (the stage is dusted with a synthetic rubber granule called EPDM, giving the impression of a dirty junkyard). From the very beginning, Danya Taymor’s production has purpose, momentum, and a strong point of view. So how does it all derail over the course of two-and-a-half hours?

I won’t entirely blame Levine and Adam Rapp’s book, which is a vast improvement on Francis Ford Coppola’s treacly film adaptation. The writers make it clear that this isn’t a superficial story of teenager gang warfare — a tale of hair product and switchblades — but one boy’s realization that he and everyone he loves are trapped in a machine that has largely determined the trajectory of their lives from birth.

That interest in class is reflected in the score, with Ponyboy’s 20-year-old brother, Darrel (Brent Comer), getting the song “Runs in the Family,” about how a tragic auto accident killed both of his parents, trapping him “between the role of a brother and a father” as he raises Ponyboy and his 16-year-old brother, Sodapop (Jason Schmidt). With an attractive country twang and a stillness that projects stoic strength (or perhaps just exhaustion), Comer hits a home run with the number. We immediately understand that Darrel was meant to be the family’s best hope at social mobility, but circumstances got in the way — that he feels a confusing mix of love and resentment when he thinks of his brothers. Ponyboy also seems to grasp Darrel’s thwarted potential from the first act, which somewhat undermines the growing-up journey he takes more convincingly in the novel.

To that end, Gone With the Wind is out as Ponyboy’s leisure reading, replaced by Great Expectations as the 14-year-old greaser contemplates the similarities between himself and Pip, two orphans navigating a class system designed to keep them down. Again, the play is so much better than the film, but the book writers are a little too eager to front-load important themes.

The supporting actors deliver competent performances as the other greasers: There’s the wise-cracking Two-Bit (an attractive and playful Daryl Tofa) everyone’s at-risk kid brother Johnny (a genuinely vulnerable Sky Lakota-Lynch), and consummate bad boy Dallas Winston. Joshua Boone brings a seen-it-all coolness to Dallas so we never question his quick thinking in getting Johnny and Ponyboy out of town after a deadly encounter with a drunk soc. Johnny and Pony are wanted men by intermission, but a sudden conflagration at the abandoned church where they are hiding out, into which a group of schoolchildren has unwisely wandered, gives them an opportunity to be heroes.

In addition to water, Taymor and the producers have expended considerable resources to bring the real element of fire into the theater. You see your ticket money onstage, but to what end? Taymor has devised a highly theatrical staging concept by having every scene take place in the vacant lot in which the greasers hang. An old car on blocks remains stage left throughout, with the actors creating every other scene using tires and wooden boards, which they whip through the air with balletic grace (scenic design by AMP featuring Tatiana Kahvegian).

The upstage wall represents the old church, and when it goes up in flames, the front rows feel the heat (special effects by Jeremy Chernick and Lillis Meeh). And while we are told that Johnny is knocked out by a falling beam, we never actually see that moment — which seems like a missed opportunity when the production has two choreographers and a staging conceit built around flying beams. Frustratingly, Taymor has not figured out how to integrate this spectacle into her larger vision.

Not everything can be laid at the feet of the director. While there are some instant classics in the score (“Stay Gold” is particularly lovely), one can feel the composers working hard in lesser numbers (like “Friday at the Drive-In”) to blast through exposition and move the story forward using unmemorable vintage pop pastiche. They seem bored by the assignment, and consequently so are we.

The designers compensate with high gloss: Brian MacDevitt’s lighting is powerful and precise, essential in creating Taymor’s cinematic moments. Hana S. Kim’s projections enhance the atmosphere and bring the drive-in experience to Broadway. Cody Spencer’s sound design is top-notch and provides for excellent balance.

Costume designer Sarafina Bush should be especially congratulated for delivering authenticity by resisting excess: No one is wearing a $1,000 leather jacket. Instead, the greasers’ outfits look like they’ve been washed and dried a hundred times, which is exactly how it is for working-class kids both then and now. If only the rest of her collaborators had shown such restraint.

By no means the worst musical of the season, The Outsiders still left me disappointed by its lack of a coherent vision. The creatives clearly did the reading, but the result is a B+.