‘Burnt Part Boys’ sing rich songs

New musical mixes bluegrass tunes with a coming-of-age saga

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Beautiful singing and a smoky bluegrass score distinguish "The Burnt Part Boys," an ambitious musical about a coal miner's teen son who vows to keep sacred his dead dad's resting place in a mine shaft.

Telling a "Stand By Me" type of coming-of-age story involving some kids on a backwoods mission, the new musical opened Tuesday at Playwrights Horizons in a co-production with Vineyard Theatre.

Earlier developed at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires, the musical reveals considerable craft and is performed with spirit but really is more of an art house piece than a show with broad commercial appeal. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Juiced up by Bruce Coughlin's flavorful hillbilly orchestrations for a six-member band, composer Chris Miller's tangy music and Nathan Tysen's vernacular lyrics often are a genuine treat to hear. Created in a toe-tapping country-western vein, the varied score sounds true to the story's 1962 times and rural West Virginia locale.

There, 14-year-old Pete (Al Calderon) is shocked to learn the local coal company intends to reopen the "Burnt Part" mineshaft where his idolized father (Michael Park) and a dozen other miners perished a decade earlier. Pilfering dynamite from his miner brother Jake (Charlie Brady) and taking along his best bud Dusty (Noah Galvin), Pete hikes off for the remote Burnt Part to sabotage the scheme.

Discovering Pete's intentions, Jake and his fellow miner Chet (Andrew Durand) pursue the boys across the treacherous terrain. Eventually, everybody — including a spitfire mountain girl (Molly Ransom) met along the way — winds up trapped in the mineshaft.

Then the ghosts of the miners appear to them.

Actually, the ghosts first materialize during the show's opening. Their benign, begrimed presence haunts the story as the actors playing them constantly rearrange ladders and other pieces to handle the action. They contribute effective vocals and mood to the musical as when they gently sing about family trees when the kids are lost in the woods.

Despite its naturally casual twang, the score modestly rises to the story's dramatic demands. The show's mood is mostly robust or reflective, but incidental comedy arises whenever Pete is struck by visions of heroes from a movie about the Alamo — most notably a John Wayne-ish version of Davy Crockett.

Much trudging and fording and climbing happens during the course of Mariana Elder's ambulant book, which is a bit corny about its tween characters — does Dusty really have to tote along his musical saw? — but deals tenderly with the tale's underlying tragedy. Director Joe Calarco fluently stages the journey around a stark, rough-hewn set by Brian Prather that gives the impression of wide-open spaces or claustrophobic crevasses according to Chris Lee's dramatic lighting.

Rolling along at 90 minutes, the musical is handsomely performed by a nine member company whose voices blend richly on the concerted numbers. The kids are all right actors, but Brady and Durand spark their easy give and take as sidekicks while Park makes a strong impression as several cinematic figments of young Pete's imagination.

An original musical that offers some bracing songs but never quite becomes as compelling as its dark, earnest story aspires to be, "The Burnt Part Boys" at least gives audiences a tasty bite of Miller and Tysen, an up and coming team with a great deal of promise.

"The Burnt Part Boys" continues through June 13 at Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St., New York. Call (212) 279-4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com.