Review: The Outsiders at Blumenthal PAC

By Perry Tannenbaum

Belk Theater will likely still be rockin’ for days after the national tour of THE OUTSIDERS strikes its deceptively simple set and rolls on up to Chicago for a two-week run. If it weren’t Charlotte Symphony already booking the space next weekend, this gritty, steady rocker could have easily played a second week here without losing momentum. And possibly more.

Opening night was an eye-opener for anyone who had never been swept up in the rite-of-passage tidal wave generated by S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film adaptation. Traffic to the College Street parking garage was so intense that, when we finally found a place on Level 8 to park, we needed to take a down elevator to exit at the bridge across to the Bank of America tower, where Blumenthal PAC has its performing spaces.

Usually, we hit the up button to go two or three floors up to Level 6.

After pausing to validate my parking stub in the lobby, we found that we were just in time as we saw the usher close the theater door behind us. It was only when we took our seats that we realized that the place wasn’t just packed… it was a sell-out. So an usher confirmed when I ambled up to the front of the house, turned around, and beheld eager theatergoers all the way up to the uppermost rows of the top balcony.

This was near-Hamilton fervor, eclipsing the receptions we’ve recently seen for such recent Tony Award-winners as Kimberly Akimbo, The Band’s Visit, Moulin Rouge, and even Hadestown. While we can all quibble and passionately argue which of these distinguished visitors should win a tournament of champions playoff, the production quality of The Outsiders was definitely top-tier, from Cody Spencer’s tight sound design to Jeremy Chernick and Lillis Meeh’s splashy special effects.

While some of the buzz that I was hearing about this Tulsa tale likened the animosities between the Greasers and the Socialites, or Socs, to the Jets and the Sharks of West Side Story, Ponyboy Curtis and his fellow Greasers are far more déclassé than their Hispanic counterparts, let alone the Montagues of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. There are no Greaser girlfriends in this grim picture, an apt barometer of these dudes’ hopelessness.

Nor is Ponyboy actually poaching on one of the Soc girls. After taking a beating for watching a movie on Soc turf, he escorts the Alpha Soc girl, Cherry, to a concession stand at a drive-in movie on neutral ground. They strike up a long conversation, enjoy each other’s company, but there’s no petting or romance.

Even so, this crosses the line for Cherry’s ultra-possessive boyfriend, Bob, and his chums. They gang up on Ponyboy and his bestie, Johnny Cade, not realizing that Dallas Winston – the Greasers’ spiritual leader and an ex-con – had recently gifted Johnny with a switchblade and taught him how to use it. Like Romeo before him, Ponyboy and Johnny Cade must flee town to avoid the law, Dallas acting as their Friar Lawrence.

The score by Jamestown Revival and Justin Levine is as consistently intense and authentic as Leonard Bernstein’s, but not nearly as varied. Nor with Levine’s arrangement for guitars, keyboard, cello, bass, violin, reeds, and drums, does it aspire to the same amplitude and agony as West Side Story. That’s about right: Amid the gloom and despair of Greaserdom, there’s a glimmer of hope emanating from Ponyboy, who has read Robert Frost and Great Expectations.

After Johnny Cade’s exhortation to “Stay Gold” in the face of Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Ponyboy’s favorite poem, that glimmer is not extinguished.

Unlike the Coppola movie, Nolan White as Ponyboy doesn’t sport the has-it-made Hollywood looks of C. Thomas Howell or the future superstar hunks – Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, and Emilio Estevez, for starters – surrounding him. More like Micky Dolenz of Monkees fame. That gives this stage version, directed by Dayna Taymor, about a million-mile head start on the film.

The other homies are no less homely (except the stunning Corbin Drew Ross as Sodapop Curtis), which is a good thing. Bonale Fambrini as Johnny Cade and Tyler Jordan Wesley as Dallas never look like they’re slumming. They sing and act as if they’re to-the-gutter-born, dressed accordingly by costume designer Sarafina Bush.

We can also gush over the glamor and drama that Emma Hearn and Mark Doyle bring to Cherry and preppy Bob. Or the family struggles, sacrifices, frustrations, and domesticity that Travis Roy Rogers brings to the action as one-time pro football hopeful Darrel, Ponyboy’s eldest brother.

But as good as Adam Rapp’s book is at capturing the striated inertia of Hinton’s Tulsa, the propulsive electricity of The Outsiders comes from its score and the flair of Rick & Jeff Kuperman’s jagged choreography. Even this isn’t enough for Taymor. The hoofers send up bursts of plastic pellets from the floor, and the climactic rumble between the gangs brings down storm showers from above. Once all of these elements began cranking up, the fanaticism of the pre-sold audience was irresistibly contagious. I listened to the acclaimed original cast album when I returned home, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the live