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Wednesday, March 30, 2005
A moving ‘Movin’ Out’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. ”Movin’ Out.” Through Sunday. The verdict: Riveting dance-theater.
If ”Movin’ Out” were just an amalgamation of the gleaming pop songs of Billy Joel, it would probably be a sorry excuse for a musical.
Instead, the 2-year-old Broadway hit builds its appeal by combining the live energy of a rock concert with the sexual expressiveness of dance. You don’t have to be a balletomane to appreciate the lean, unfussy choreography of Twyla Tharp. Nor a social commentator to see the instructiveness of this Vietnam-era elegy, which provides flesh-and-blood evidence of how war can rob us of our very souls.
Making its Atlanta debut at the Fox Theatre this week, ”Movin’ Out” ranks among the most moving and physically glorious theatrical experiences of the season.
The genius of this show, which was conceived, directed and choreographed by Tharp, is that it uses Joel’s storytelling songs to evince a fully developed narrative arc.
Theater-goers of a certain age remember Brenda and Eddie as the ”popular steadies” from ”Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” We know Tony as the young renegade from the titular ”Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song).” Tharp imagines these three as a love triangle that’s soon joined by sweethearts Judy and James (”Just the Way You Are”). Then she plops them all down in the town of Hicksville, where it’s just one big sockhop of dancing, making out and cruising. (I mean, what’s a ’50s musical without a red convertible?)
But “Movin’ Out” can’t linger long in the nostalgia because of Vietnam. Or as Joel’s culture-referencing ”We Didn’t Start the Fire” spews: ”JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say. Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again.”
Backed by a terrific eight-piece band, vocalist/pianist Darren Holden invests Joel’s repertoire with his own kicky style and personality. It’s Bruce Springsteen meets Elton John —- in a good way. The band perches on a catwalk that crowns Santo Loquasto’s set of steel girders and speakers, while lighting designer Donald Holder shifts tones with symbolic strokes of gunsmoke blues and apocalyptic reds.
However, these visual enhancements never get in the way of this ensemble’s glorious dancing. The unassailable star is Rasta Thomas, who envisions Eddie as a mixture of James Dean and Mikhail Baryshnikov. With Kirov and Joffrey Ballet credits, Thomas is an angelic presence and a technical virtuoso. (Note that the part of Eddie rotates between Thomas and Brendan King.)
Corbin Popp makes a blond and bulky Tony, Laurie Kanyok an appropriately vulgar Brenda and Matthew Dibble a sweet and tragic James. In widow’s weeds, Julieta Gros (Judy) is an ethereal, diaphanous ballerina of great emotional complexity.
On its own, Billy Joel’s reputation would appear to be on the wan. He’s an entertainer —- not a poet. But Twyla Tharp manages to reshape his vision into a meditation on war that’s profound, cathartic and ultimately redemptive. Defying all conventions of musical theater, ”Movin’ Out” rocks the house and moves the heart.
THE 411: 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday. 2 p.m. Saturday. 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Through Sunday. $22-$62. Broadway in Atlanta, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-817-8700, www.foxtheatre.org.
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