‘On the Levee’ proves heavy going

New play with music recalls an historic Mississippi disaster

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

LCT3 is Lincoln Center Theater's initiative to forge ties with new artists by giving their works modest but fully staged off-Broadway productions. With tickets priced at $20, audiences already have been treated to several cool LCT3 shows, notably Ann Marie Healy's chilling "What Once We Felt" look at a dystopian future.

Especially with a developmental series, audiences cannot expect every new work to be satisfying and such is the case of "On the Levee," which opened Monday at The Duke.

Billed as a play with music, "On the Levee" is a muddy mix of melodrama, documentary, bluesy tunes and woeful visuals regarding the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 that killed hundreds of people and displaced many thousands more. Rural African-Americans were hit particularly hard and many migrated northwards to big cities.

Parallels with the Katrina disaster are invited but not underlined in the desultory production helmed by Lear deBessonet, who conceived and directs the project performed by a 12-member ensemble.

Father-son conflicts, one white and the other black, fitfully drive Marcus Gardley's story. In the mansion up on the hill, Michael Siberry storms about as the wealthy patriarch while his softie Great War vet scion Seth Numrich ineffectually leads the flood relief committee. Down on the river, Amari Cheatom loses his juke joint to the flood while at loggerheads with dad Dion Graham, who toils as a bootblack for the rich family. Several romances also pop up among the characters.

The problem is that while Gardley fashions poetic dialogue and striking moments, his sprawling tale with its obvious high-low class contrasts generally recall heavy-breathing Warner Bros. movies of the 1940s. This florid plot might be treated best as a full-fledged musical. Certainly the patchy epic flickers brighter whenever the honky-tonk and blues-infused incidental songs composed by Todd Almond take over.

The production further suffers from awkward tonal shifts in deBessonet's sluggish staging and designer Peter Ksander's indoor-outdoor setting, which initially accommodates the episodic story but fails to render the disaster persuasively. Shadow puppets and projections by Kara Walker are surprisingly commonplace, although Almond's atmospheric music accompanying them rarely ceases to impress.

The most noteworthy performances are scored by Harriet D. Foy as a servant who craves a better life elsewhere and Chuck Cooper as a lily-livered preacher who makes off with his congregation's offerings. Stephen Plunkett provides a hot-eyed presence in an underdeveloped thread involving a predatory go-getter whose clashes with Numrich's loser character appear more sexual than otherwise in their basis.

While "On the Levee" turns out to be something of a washout, worthy elements by Gardley and Almond - an exchange of dialogue here, a gospel dirge there - intermittently float to the surface like furniture carried along by a flood tide. Both writers show considerable promise, but their work is mostly lost in the larger scheme of a misguided project that does not capitalize on their talents.

"On the Levee" continues through July 11 at The Duke, 229 W. 42nd St., New York. Call (646) 223-3010 or visit www.dukeon42.org.