‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ musical needs to cultivate a more cohesive storyline
In 1981, Savannah, Georgia, antiques dealer Jim Williams, 50, shot his lover/employee Danny Hansford, 21. Some 13 years later, writer John Berendt’s exploration of the murder and Savannah’s rich, eccentric culture became the best-selling Pulitzer Prize finalist “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” The true-crime, Southern gothic murder mystery also inspired a 1997 movie of the same name.
Monday night, “Midnight” took on yet another form, opening as a world premiere musical at the Goodman Theatre.
Directed by Tony Award winner Rob Ashford, the production, running through Aug. 11, features music and lyrics by two-time Tony winner Jason Robert Brown, a book by MacArthur “genius” Taylor Mac, and big Broadway aspirations. It needs some work if it’s going to get there.
As “Midnight” on stage (which loosely follows the novel) moves from the days leading up to Hansford’s murder to Williams’ final appeal in 1989, the plot becomes a meandering jumble of barely connected threads. As it highlights the idiosyncratic Savannahians who made the novel a page turner, “Midnight” the musical feels more like a series of sharply drawn character sketches than a complete, compelling, coherent narrative.
While the tale revolves around Williams (Tom Hewitt) and Hansford (Austin Colby), the show belongs — heart, soul, book and score — to the Lady Chablis (Tony- and Grammy-winner J. Harrison Ghee), the transgender cabaret artist also known as the Empress of Savannah. Ghee delivers one jaw-dropping, show-stopping number after another with pageant-winner glitz and ball-culture energy. She brings the polish and the party to the stage, with a drop-split of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the knee-to-nose kick of a Rockette and the duck walk of a ballroom title holder. It's a shame the character has virtually nothing to do with the overarching plot.
For those not familiar with Berendt’s novel or the movie, some of minor characters in “Midnight” — including Luther Driggers (Sean Donovan) and Alma Knox Carter (Jessica Molaskey) — won’t make any sense whatsoever as they wander in and out of scenes. Carter is burdened with a wholly extraneous song about a chandelier (“Since My Mama Died”) that feels inserted into the show by committee rather than driven by artistry.
J. Harrison Ghee (center, as the Lady Chablis) leads cast members Mary Ernster (from left), Christopher Kelley, Sean Donovan, Andre Malcolm, DeMarius R. Copes, Jarvis B. Manning Jr. and Wes Olivier in a scene from “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” the stage musical in its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre.
Liz Lauren
Subplots such as the abrupt evolution of business-minded debutante Lavella Cole (Shanel Bailey) feel extraneous, albeit beautifully rendered. The debutante ball in “Lift Her Up” is a glorious whirl of ballet merged with praise dance among other styles (Tanya Birl-Torres’ choreography is stunning throughout), but it doesn’t deepen the plot so much as it spreads it thinner.
The main characters could use some nuance. Hansford is a camped-up cartoon rendition of James Dean, scowling and snarling in a “Partridge Family” T-shirt (Toni-Leslie James’ costumes are an absolute delight throughout). Williams is largely defined by his molasses-thick drawl. There’s little chemistry between the two, rendering a supposedly volatile, passionate relationship bland.
That’s not to say “Midnight” isn’t entertaining. Brown’s prolific score contains treasures as it moves from hair-raising anthems (“Butterflies,” delivered by Ghee with roaring effect) to disco-glitzy dancefloor bangers (Ghee leading the charge in “Let There Be Light”). As Minerva, Brianna Buckley’s incantations in “Bonaventure” are wondrously eerie, evoking powers both ancient and primal. Hewitt leads the cynical, stark “Reasonable Doubt,” a slick, scary depiction of the jurisprudence in the land of backwoods Southern lawyers.
Which brings me to Tony winner Sierra Boggess as Emma Dawes, an Anita Bryant-like matron prone to extolling the lost world of the antebellum South. Boggess’ take-no-prisoners power soprano anchors “Savannah Is Restored,” a lamentation over the southland’s ignominious surrender to the “war of Northern aggression.” Playing white supremacy for yuks, even in song, is a choice. So is peppering the storyline with running gags about Nazi memorabilia. “The Producers” got away with it in 2001. But that was then.
“Midnight” looks and sounds great. Christopher Oram’s set feels thick with humidity and ghosts as the action unfurls under the Spanish moss cloaking Bonaventure Cemetery. Conductor Thomas Murray’s 12-strong orchestra sounds lush and intricate.
The macabre, unearthly bones of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” are in place. Brown and Mac need to find a way to integrate them into the overarching plot, while making them gleam with the luminosity of the Lady Chablis.