Review: Music City, a Heartwarming Country Musical off-Broadway

A Nashville dive bar has taken over a turret of St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church on the Upper West Side. This is the Wicked Tickle, setting of songwriter JT Harding and playwright Peter Zinn’s extraordinary new musical Music City. Bedlam’s artistic director Eric Tucker applies the inventive staging techniques on which the company has built its reputation to a good old-fashioned story set to excellent songs. What more could you want?

Dickerson Pike feels like worlds away from Manhattan. That’s where brothers TJ (Stephen Michael Spencer) and Drew (Jonathan Judge-Russo) live. Former foster kids, they now write songs together (Drew comes up with the titles and TJ does all the rest). When Nashville agent Leanne (Leenya Rideout) hears them singing their party anthem “Y’allsome” she thinks she’s found potential songwriters for her superstar client, Stucky Stiles (Andrew Rothenberg). But they’ll need to give her a demo album first, which requires money for studio time — $2,000 to be exact. With few options, they turn to the only person they know with that kind of cash, the local meth dealer, Bakerman (Rothenberg). He makes them work for it.

At the same time, TJ falls for a beautiful songstress with the enigmatic name 23 (Casey Shuler), whose mother Tammy (Rideout) is struggling with addiction. You can probably see where this is going, but just because we have a map doesn’t mean we don’t feel every sharp turn and bump in the road.

That’s just a taste of the story that drives Zinn’s book, which also features subplots about music industry treachery and military service. None of it feels like an excuse to shoehorn in another one of Harding’s songs, which fit seamlessly into the narrative. When it comes to devised plot jukebox musicals, my general rule is the more ridiculous, the better. But Zinn and Harding offer a masterful example of how this much-dreaded form of musical theater can address serious topics in a thoughtful way.

That’s because there’s so much character, joy, and heartache baked into Harding’s songs: Our first introduction to 23 is “Something More,” a wistful “I want” song of lowered expectations that instantly lets us know where she’s coming from. “Party People” both gives us a sense of TJ’s boisterous style as a songwriter and takes on a darker second meaning as he and Drew make deliveries to tweakers all over East Nashville. And the duet “Smile” is like rocket fuel for the budding romance between TJ and 23.

It certainly helps that Spencer and Shuler have oodles of natural charm and charisma, giving us a couple to root for. Judge-Russo makes an appropriately hilarious and cuddly sidekick. Rideout delivers two very different performances as Leanne and Tammy, the latter masking insecurity in aggression, so we’re never in doubt about whom she is playing.

Rothenberg is similarly distinct in his two roles, adopting the most menacing lisp I’ve ever heard for Bakerman and then dropping on octave to play the bourbon-voiced country crooner. The authoritative Julianne B. Merrill plays the bar’s proprietor, Wynn, while also serving as the production’s music supervisor. And Drew Bastian plays Newt the drummer, while actually drumming through the whole show.

As you might have gleaned, Music City uses actor-musicians in a manner reminiscent of John Doyle’s best work. Leanne seethes through her fiddle as Stucky and 23 perform “Sangria,” a new hit single that she had nothing to do with. It’s hard not to laugh when we see Bakerman clad in an orange jumpsuit (effective, if on-the-nose costumes by Daniele Tyler Mathews), languidly playing the tambourine to a reprise of “Y’allsome.” Everyone is part of the band.

Tucker’s staging maximizes the potential of a seemingly limited and oddly shaped theater, with Clifton Chadick’s multilevel set evoking a dive bar while stealthily transforming into a number of other locations under Eric Southern’s well-placed lighting. John Heginbotham choreographs the dancers (the adorable Corry J Ethridge and Holly Wilder) in the aisles, on the bar, and on the narrow mezzanine high above the stage. They even invite audience members for a slow dance during the song “Alone With You,” a magical moment that exemplifies the best of what immersive theater can be.

Scenes take place all around us, and it occasionally feels like overhearing a heated argument in a crowded bar. But sound designer Jane Shaw has ensured that we rarely miss a line or lyric — again, an impressive feat in a theater as strange as this one.

Country music seems to be having a moment, transcending into cosmopolitan culture in ways it rarely has during my lifetime (you know something’s up when Beyoncé wants in). But is it finally ready to scale the walls of that citadel of snobbery, the off-Broadway theater, and take its rightful place as one of the dominant styles for musical storytelling? Music City, an innovative new musical that produces the warm feelies of a classic one, really makes me believe it could.