Fire on the Mountain may not be perfect, but it's packed with the same heart and soul found in the music of the fiercely proud coal miners of the Appalachian Mountains.
The production at Seattle Rep's Leo K. Theatre celebrates these miners through the songs they sing and love. But don't expect a traditional book musical. The performance unfolds more like a musical documentary about the history of coal mining and the folk music it spawned.
Behind this creation are co-writers Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman, who also teamed up on "Ain't Nothing But the Blues" seen at Seattle Repertory Theatre almost two years ago.
Myler directs "Fire on the Mountain," while Wheetman steers the musical direction. They took their inspiration from true stories found in miners' diaries, interviews and news coverage. You won't see Myler onstage, but you will see Wheetman, who fiddled, toured and recorded with John Denver for several years. And you'll hear more than three dozen songs in 90 uninterrupted minutes, while heart-wrenching black-and-white images of actual miners and their homes, families, pets and funeral processions continuously play out on two large screens above the on-stage action.
The production unfolds through music and narration, with limited dialogue. Rooted in traditional English, Irish and Scottish ballads, in bluegrass music, the tempos vary. If you don't happen to be familiar with the bluegrass sound, think back to the scores of such films as "O Brother Where Art Thou?," "Deliverance," "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Cold Mountain."
Each song tells its story with disarming and often touching simplicity. This should be a surefire journey to the heart of any audience. Unfortunately, in "Fire on the Mountain" the spoken script lacks the lyrical quality inherent to the music, so it fails to develop an intimacy that might have lifted this production to legend. And the rustic set, despite its down-home charm, seems to inhibit the actors' freedom of movement, confining the action to three small areas.
But everyone on stage honors the mountain people they portray with reverence and, when fitting, a touch of humor. Clad in overalls, plaid shirts and homespun dresses and aprons, the performers play and sing about coal miners' love for the mountains, though they are beset by low wages, black lung, cave-ins, unions, strip mining and child labor. You also hear about the tragic exploitation by greedy mining companies, whose representatives strong-armed impoverished farmers into selling the rights to their coal-rich land for 25 cents an acre.
Mining's sort of like smoking, the workers say, only harder on the lungs. So they sing about their prayers and perils, their hopes and fears, as they foretell of death and explosion: "Dark as a dungeon, damp as the dew, where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few." In one daunting scene, four trapped miners perform an a cappella rendition of "Shut Up in the Mines of Coal Creek," accompanied only by an ominous echo.
Every Sunday in mining towns, the men lay down their shovels and pick up their instruments for a community jamboree at the meeting house - after church, of course.
"Y'see a coal miner only gets but one sunset a week," advises a widowed matron, stalwartly played by Margaret A. Bowman, who conjures Ma Joad from "The Grapes of Wrath." Clad in homespun, she spins her tale about taking two years to accept the death of her coal-miner husband, while a younger woman rhapsodizes about romance and marriage. And an 8-year-old boy who earns only 25 cents a day in the mines brags that he just "cain't" wait until he's 17 so's he can earn $1.60 a day. Plus all the coal dust he can eat.
Feet thumping and arms and fingers flying, the talented musicians in "Fire on the Mountain" hold forth on banjo, guitar, fiddle, harmonica, mandolin, upright bass, mountain dulcimer and the limberjack, a percussion instrument unique to the Southern Appalachia. Most of these artists play several instruments with equal proficiency. Dan Wheetman, Tony Marcus, Lee Morgan, Ed Snodderly and Trevor Wheetman all change instruments faster than you can say "Coal Miner's Daughter."
The winsome Molly Andrews personifies young Appalachian women, as she delivers the trademark high, lonesome sound of mountain music with her haunting a cappella vocals.
She's charming on "Single Girl" and haunting on "Black Waters." And she joins the marvelously talented Morgan to duo on "Sweet as the Flowers in May Time." Morgan gets his own turn to charm as he steal a kiss and sings, "Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane."
"Mississippi" Charles Bevel brings the bluesy folk tunes like "Coal Loadin' Blues" and "Drill Man's Blues" alive with his soulful voice, while the whole cast joyfully proclaims "They'll Never Keep Us Down."
Above the mismatched chairs and rockers, a sign reads "Be careful today be alive tomorrow." Even with heavy machinery replacing shovels and pickaxes, death still stalks these miners on a daily basis. Remember the tragic and highly publicized 2006 Sago Mine disaster in Tallsmansville, W. Va.: only one miner survived. The 2001 Brookside Mine explosion in Alabama killed 13, and in 1968, the Farmington mining tragedy in West Virginia took 78 lives.
"Fire on the Mountain" offers a meaningful glimpse into American history and music, but does not ignite an enduring blaze. Although it comes very close, the production never quite shatters that invisible boundary between performer and audience.
The musicians are stellar - virtuoso even - and individual moments are profound and poignant. But this mood doesn't always sustain, ultimately undermining the natural spontaneity that should make the music soar.
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