“Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers, and great talkers.” – Eudora Welty (1909–2001)
Bright Star captures Eudora Welty’s sentiment about the spirit of southern storytelling. From the opening number to the finale, we are witness to a poignant story inspired by true events. Moving between the 1920s and 1940s in North Carolina, we follow literary editor Alice Murphy’s journey to understand her past. Along the way, we meet her parents, her love interest Jimmy Ray and his father (the mayor), an aspiring writer named Billy Cane, and the dreamy-eyed bookstore owner Margo. This tale of love, loss, and redemption has painful lows and powerful highs. There are also some wonderful moments of levity, notably by junior editor Lucy, magazine assistant Daryl, self-identified hillbilly Daddy Cane, and the young town folk trio of Edna, Max, and Florence.
The 2016 Tony®-nominated score is a collaboration between Grammy Award winner and Tony®-nominated comedian and musician Steve Martin and Billboard top vocalist Edie Brickell. A few years earlier in 2013 the duo produced the bluegrass album Love Has Come For You, which featured a song that inspired Bright Star: “Sarah Jane and the Iron Mountain Baby.” I encourage you to listen to the song after the show. Without spoiling anything, the banjo melody that Steve sent Edie inspired the lyric, “Woo, oo! Baby!” And from there a story emerged about a train and a baby. The making of Bright Star…
As a dramaturg, I have enjoyed working with the cast to unpack all the musical’s cultural references about the United States before and after World War II. For example, several characters mention writers from the time, including Ernest Hemingway, Carl Sandburg, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The cast researched their styles and the ways each captured the downhome quality of life in the South. We also discussed the origins of bluegrass in European folk and African American religious music. This context underscores the importance of call-and-response and vocal refrains throughout the show.
In the words of some of the cast, Bright Star is about discovering the meaning of family, finding yourself, small-town folk longing for life in the big city, forgiveness, loss and redemption, coming to terms with and learning from your past, and closure. I look forward to hearing how the show moves you.
Content Warning: Bright Star is a performance with heightened emotional moments and some mature themes.
Dr. Bryan C. Keene
Associate Professor
Art History & Theatre
Riverside City College
