Roy Acuff, the grand old man of the Grand Ole Opry, once scolded a
stone-drunk Hank Williams for allowing a two-bit brain to cripple his
million-dollar talent. Not only was Acuff’s comment an accurate
assessment of ol’ Hank’s dipsomaniacal predicament, it makes for a
serviceable one-sentence review of the play Hank Williams: Lost
Highway, which closes at Circuit Playhouse this weekend.
Lost Highway is a dumbed down retelling of the Hank Williams
story. But the singing and playing couldn’t be better, and in spite of
all the criticism that follows, lovers of classic country music should
reserve tickets while the getting’s good. Because when Tim Greer opens
his mouth to sing, the spirit of Hiram King Williams lives again.
At one point, a character in Lost Highway describes Williams’
music as sounding like something that came from “far back in the woods”
or deep down in a “hole” — as if the singer were some redneck
answer to Tarzan the noble white savage. After all, Hank the hillbilly
learned to sing authentic black-folk blues from Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne,
an obscure African-American street performer described by other
characters in Lost Highway as someone sensible people should
probably be afraid of. Even if you can forgive the show’s authors for
transforming Payne into the racist epitome of the magical Negro, the
evolution of hillbilly music into rock-and-roll wasn’t nearly so abrupt
or personal. Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodels” had been hot sellers for a
decade before the 13-year-old Williams stood on the street in front of
WSFA radio in Montgomery, Alabama, singing and banging on his
Silvertone guitar. Mexican radio stations had been blasting Carter
Family songs across the country for nearly as long.
Although Williams, like most hillbilly artists of his day, worried
that he’d never be understood by big-city swells, he was a
sophisticated artist whose songs were quickly covered by crooners like
Tony Bennett. He became the displaced father of honky-tonk music
— a whiskey-soaked memory of rural life born of post-Depression
transience and raised in the neon glow of postwar urbanism. In the
passion play of modern American music, he plays the role of John the
Baptist to Elvis’ rockabilly messiah.
Lost Highway imagines Williams’ band the Drifting Cowboys as
a tightly knit group of childhood friends who only split up when
Williams’ drinking gets out of hand near the end of his life. This is
nonsense. The show only fully acknowledges Williams’ first wife,
Audrey, establishing her desire to sing in the band as the couple’s
primary conflict. The play only touches on — if rather
heavy-handedly — mutual infidelity, paranoia, and
drunkenness.
In casting the Drifting Cowboys, director Emily Wells and music
director Renee Kemper have wisely chosen in most cases to use musicians
rather than actors. Consequently, there’s some underacting and some
ridiculous mugging, but when it’s time to get down to the essence of
what Williams was all about, nothing else matters.
It’s too early in the season to start picking Ostrander winners, but
Greer, a respectable guitar player and solid actor who skillfully
navigates even the most painfully misguided aspects of Lost
Highway, should be a shoo-in for a nomination. From the
high-lonesome yodels of “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” to the faux-Cajun
dialect of “Jambalaya” and the elegant minimalism of “I’m So Lonesome I
Could Cry,” he captures Williams’ timbre and phrasing without crossing
the line into cheap impersonation. It is a remarkable performance that
transforms this musical into the first must-see show of the new season.
And there’s not much time left to catch it.