SON OF FIRE
Son of Fire is a good show, as far as craftsmanship goes. It’s efficiently staged, interestingly designed, generally well acted, and under Dan Stetzel’s musical direction consistently well sung. But it misses the point of the story it seeks to dramatize–a real-life scandal that shocked the Chicago art world in the mid-1980s. Instead of giving the episode the subtle in- quiry it invites, director David Zak and composer-librettist Christopher Moore (a good musician but not a gifted lyricist) settle for a broad, heavy-handed treatment that’s completely at odds with the ambiguous story. From the alternately strident and soupy pop-operatic score, whose pedestrian rhymes and predictable musical patterns are all wrong for the sophisticated characters, to the amateurish pretend paintings, whose garish ugliness is a jarring contrast to the stage set’s understated elegance (Robert A. Knuth is credited with scenic design), Son of Fire completely misunderstands–and misrepresents–the milieu in which it’s set and the sensibility it aims to reflect.
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There’s no denying the talent involved in this Bailiwick Repertory production, the first major entry in its gay- and lesbian-themed Pride Performance Series 93. (Though a musical about a fucked-up fag who kills himself on a gay beach hardly seems an apt offering; call me old-fashioned, but this is gay pride?) Heading a vocally impressive ensemble (which includes such non-Equity musical-theater stalwarts as Dan Ferretti, Matthew McDonald, Don Auxier, George B. Smart III, and Christopher Gurr) is Will Chase in a fully committed and musically excellent performance as Wagner. (Chase, it should be noted, is far more boyishly vigorous than the epicene Walker was.) Opposite him as Shima is Alexandra Billings, a non-Asian transsexual who’s quite a good singer but not particularly convincing as a middle-aged Japanese woman–and wholly unconvincing as an artist. Of course, Moore hasn’t given Billings much to work with: his shallow depiction of the brilliant, delicate painter makes her come across as little more than an aging geisha.
