Lawson Taitte

Earlier this month Undermain Theatre reopened its original stage adaptation of Neil Young's Greendale, which had been a hit for it in Deep Ellum last spring and played to sold-out houses in New York's Ice Factory Festival this summer. Two new cast members joined the show before the New York run, and the piece has been tightened considerably, so this dramatic version of the 2003 concept album about violence and environmental politics in a West Coast town is now at its peak.

Theater critic Lawson Taitte and pop music critic Thor Christensen discuss the musical aspects of this unique show.

LAWSON: How did you feel about Greendale when it first came out, and about its other incarnations, Thor? Neil Young did the ambitious concept album as his response to the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the government reaction to them. He couldn't seem to let the matter go – there was a live tour, a movie, a book. Did you respond to them at all?

THOR: I was a Greendale skeptic at first. In 2003, before the movie or album came out, I saw Neil Young perform it at Smirnoff Music Centre [now Superpages.com Center] and thought the staging was forced: The actors were lip-syncing to his singing and hamming it up big time to try to reach fans up in the lawn seats. The only thing that worked for me was the music, which captures him in all his grunge-blues glory. Even now, the album holds up as one of his better post-millennial CDs.

LAWSON: Undermain producer Bruce DuBose fell in love with the piece from the beginning and was determined to make a more successful stage piece out of it. Of course, in his version the actors all sing their individual roles, so we don't have the lip-sync problem. The story is still somewhat obscure at times. Occasionally I found myself wishing they would project the lyrics somewhere, making this rock opera more like a real opera (since almost all opera companies do that these days). But on the whole it works very well for me.

Probably the most crucial thing in the success of the Undermain production is the use of three musicians with sizable local, and even national, reputations.

THOR: I couldn't agree more. The three-man band helps carry the show. Bassist Paul Semrad (ex-Course of Empire) and drummer Alan Emert (Brave Combo) make up the airtight rhythm section, but the key is guitarist Kenny Withrow (New Bohemians). Like Neil Young, he's a fearless improviser who uses distortion without overdoing it. And rather than just mimicking Neil, he uses the songs as a springboard into his own flights of fancy. I came away from Greendale thinking that was the best Kenny Withrow performance I've ever seen – and I've seen him a bunch of times since 1988.

LAWSON: That's saying a lot.

It's interesting that both this show and Kevin Moriarty's version of The Who's Tommy at the Dallas Theater Center put local rock musicians front and center. I found Withrow and company more engaging, actually, though Mr. Moriarty's use of the Denton band Oso Closo was more highly integrated into the action of the show; the band members there were almost like a band of invisible angels, protecting and consoling Tommy. That Theater Center show is an enormous hit with them and has already walked off with a clutch of Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum awards. But is it just me, or is Greendale, and the music in it, actually more moving?

THOR: I was moved more by the music in Tommy. It's not the Who's best rock opera – that honor goes to Quadrophenia – but it has so many great twists and turns and anthems, it still sounds groundbreaking 40 years later. That said, Greendale gives a band more room to groove than Tommy. You just can't take many liberties with a classic like "Pinball Wizard," but in a little-known work like Greendale, Withrow and company were able to stretch out and put their own stamp on it.

LAWSON: I also liked the way director Katherine Owens put her own stamp on the material. Katherine has long been interested in various religious traditions and in Karl Jung's ideas linking alchemical symbols to the unconscious psyche. When Sun Green writes symbols on the wall and puts eagle feathers at the four corners of the compass in Greendale, that really connects for me. And when the cast breaks into that Native American unison dance in the finale, "Be the Rain," it is thrilling.

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