"Folsom Prison Blues"
As The Wrong Man, a new musical at the Robert W.
Wilson MCC Theater Space, got under way last night and the lead character,
Duran, began singing, I suddenly had the feeling I was literally in the
presence of the wrong man. I’d come with the expectation that Duran was being
played by Joshua Henry, the powerful, African-American star who rocked the
rafters as Billy Bigelow in the recent revival of Carousel. Ryan Vasquez,
the actor playing Duran, however, is not black, and it wasn’t until the show
was over that I realized what had happened.  |
| Ryan Vasquez, Ciara Renee. All photos: Matthew Murphy. |
 |
| Joshua Henry and company. |
The Wrong Man is not a musicalization of the realistic,
b/w, Alfred Hitchcock
movie of 1956, based on a true story, starring Henry Fonda as a Queens, NY,
man caught up in a Kafkaesque nightmare after being wrongly convicted of robbery.
The show, by pop songwriter Ross Golan, and directed by Thomas Kail of Hamilton
fame, is instead based on an animated film and, later, concept album,
inspired by Illinois governor George Ryan’s 2004 moratorium on the death
penalty.
 |
| Ryan Vasquez, Kyle Robinson, Tilly Evans-Krueger. |
 |
| Ciara Renee, Joshua Henry. |
 |
| Ryan Vasquez and company. |
A glass-enclosed booth up center—suggestive of a recording
studio—houses percussionist Jamie Eblen, with the other musicians (keyboard,
two guitars, and bass) visible nearby. Chairs, stools, and a pair of wooden
benches serve for all scenic uses, with barely any hand props brought into
play. A hand, for example, serves as a knife or gun.
 |
| Joshua Henry. |
Jennifer Moeller and Kristin Isola have costumed everyone (mostly
slacks and t-shirts) in shades of black and gray, requiring Betsy Small to
introduce the necessary color in her creative, hyperactive, lighting design.
Duran narrates his story in direct address, with songs written
largely to an insistent, driving beat, combining jazz, pop rock, and hip-hop
rhythms (think Hamilton). He either stands alone in a spotlight or
engages with a dynamic ensemble of strikingly distinctive dancer-singers who undertake multiple parts. Their names are Tilly
Evans-Krueger, Malik Kitchen, Libby Lloyd, Kyle Robinson, and Debbie Christine Tjong.
Ciara Renée (Big Fish), who plays the murdered femme fatale, Mariana, joins
the ensemble when not otherwise engaged, as does Desai, whose main job is as
the villain.
This 90-minute piece recounts how the good-looking Duran, who
works in “middle management” and whose private life is in a
shambles, picks up (or vice-versa) the hot as a griddle but somehow troubled cocktail
waitress, Mariana, at a bar, and has a steamy affair that leads to her getting
pregnant. Her troubles hark back to her abusive husband, the Man in Black, of
whom Duran had no knowledge. Marianna is stabbed to death, and the Man in Black
contrives to frame Duran. Never before in trouble with the law, he’s arrested,
tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Folsom Prison.
Duran’s story is enacted in swiftly moving scenes, terrifically
choreographed by Travis Wall (TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance”), combining
jazz dance and ballet, and including numerous sequences when the ensemble, even
when just standing or sitting, reacts with sharply rhythmic precision to the decisive
percussive beats punctuating the score. The sizzling ensemble moves with sinuous
sexuality, occasionally serving as movement doppelgangers for the singing characters,
although even the actors playing the latter are trained dancers.
The Wrong Man’s music, well-orchestrated by Alex Lacamoire,
is engaging and infectiously rhythmic but also repetitious, with too many
numbers having a similar, one-note (metaphorically) attack. Similarly, the lyrics,
lacking much detail, not to mention humor, often keep repeating the same refrains.
And, with the singing usually at ear-blasting decibel levels, the narrative
specifics blur, weakening the dramatic impact of the exposition and reveling instead
in the hero’s trauma.
We understand his emotional anxiety but fail to sympathize because
of its lack of nuance. Anyone recalling
the legal details surrounding the case in Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man—regardless
of it being a different story—will be disappointed at how simplistically Golan
handles Duran’s judicial fate.
I sorely missed seeing Joshua Henry, whose performance others
have praised to the heavens, especially given the racial significance his
presence would have brought to this tale of wrongful incarceration. Vasquez was
certainly satisfactory the night I saw him but the chances are he was the wrong
man to save The Wrong Man from itself.
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space/Newman
Mills Theater
511 W. 52nd St., NYC
Through November 24
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
