I spent the longest time at Holler
if Ya Hear Me wondering
if I were even qualified to review it. I mean, middle of the road Jewish white
guy, expert on musicals (at least I like to think so, and am oft treated thus),
yes—but this one has a score assembled from the catalog of a dead guy,
rapper Tupac Shakur, shot dead
at 25, known for being the balladeer of inner city hardships through an African
American filter. (Balladeer? Well, he was the lyricist. The composers were
many, but we’re not really talking about composition so much as sonic
texturing. Their credits are in the back of the program, in the small-print
section.) But finally I had to deal with this—whatever the vocabulary, it
was an inner city story full of familiar tropes: the guy who tries to go straight
but gets shafted by straight society and boomerangs; the gang-banger and
drug-dealer who has to choose between the power of his life of crime and the
potential loss of his knowing mother’s love; the young street kid caught up in
the rhetoric of published propaganda crying out for blood—and all of them
in the service of a story whose thesis is, We have to stop the fighting and
the killing, and progress won’t start until we take the first step.
Noble as that message is, does a Broadway musical theatre audience take their seats not knowing it? Is there enough drama in waiting for the characters on stage to wise up to it?
Tell a gang-banger that the guy you kill also has a mother, and needs to be regarded as a human being who can suffer loss as profoundly as anyone, maybe he views the world a different way. But he’s not likely to show up at the Palace Theatre. If he were at a Broadway musical, he wouldn’t need to be the guy with the gun; the mere fact of going to the theatre would mean he’s dreaming bigger.
Tell me that the point is neighborhood and community awareness? That the show is not trying to reach the gang-banger, but the open-minded kid still assessing his influences? Or the teacher or guidance counselor who might well find the template for his convincing argument to a group of kids on the brink? Fair enough, but that’s educational theatre.
Tell me that my view is too narrow and that Holler if Ya Hear Me just means to be a glimpse of a subcultue heretofore unrecognized in musical theatre, hoping to hit a universal chord via humanist moral stance? And/or means to be a beacon for the African-American community, representing inner-city issues, music and language without white Broadway filtering? Again, fair enough.
But
then it has to be better. Because craft knows no boundaries.
The focus of Holler if Ya Hear Me sprawls among a number of characters, none of whom truly takes the lead until late in the proceedings, and its awareness-raising dramaturgy (book by Todd Kreidler) is so transparent that it’s hard to totally lose yourself in the story for the agenda being so present.
Then
again, Shakur’s poems and lyrics are all about the message. To my sensibility,
their content is obvious and unsubtle; but then again, again, he had a gift for hooky titles and facile streetwise
wordplay—rather as if he were the hip-hop Hal David. Though it pays to
remember, Hal David wasn’t much of a musical dramatist either. Yet both had a
populist sensibility and ear. And each has an audience to whom their brand of
populism speaks.
Given that the lyrics are what the show is built upon, though, you’d think the sound design (John Shivers and David Partridge) would be cleaner; but the vocal gain is often hot to the point of distortion, rendering many of the lyrics hard-to-impossible to understand clearly. That aside, the drama is acted well enough and directed well enough (by Kenny Leon), and the choreography (Wayne Cilento) has the requisite polish, intricacy and authenticity for the métier. Too, despite the oppressive/charged environment of the show, the set (Edward Pierce) has been designed with a clever, spare openness—and establishes a template that can be stripped down to tour cheaply. It seemed to me rather like a very expensive Theatreworks/USA approach.
And
basically, indeed, Holler if Ya Hear Me
truly is the educational show
about good neighborhood conduct that dare not speak its genre. I wonder if it
even means to succeed on
Broadway. I wonder if the long game here isn’t, ultimately a film or at least a
video—which, of course, could and would play at affordable prices to the people who need to
hear the message—and/or indeed the stripped down version that can play
community centers in urban areas that would find it relevant—but one that
comes to the ‘hood with Broadway stage street-cred. And a cast album.
Certainly that would be my long game, if I were producing it. Then it would make some sense. Not just culturally. But financially.
And
it wouldn’t be a bad idea. But I think some of the players in this arena have already had it.
Else why would the official website be replete with a Study Guide…?
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