Warrior

The story of football legend Jim Thorpe might not seem an obvious choice for musicalization, but it certainly is an ingenious one. Nearly a hundred years ago, he was hailed by royalty as the greatest athlete in the world. Fifty years ago, he died penniless in a trailer home, with not even enough money for a proper funeral. Thorpe's life was almost operatic in its range, reaching from the heights of worldwide acclaim and glory to the lows of prejudice and poverty. So while the life of a football hero may seem a less obvious source for a musical than, say, the life of an Argentine dictator's wife, it has no less capacity for drama.

Unfortunately, Warrior, the new musical by Marcus Hummon about Thorpe's rise and fall, doesn't do the man or his story justice, and is one of the more frustrating musicals to appear at NYMF: a brilliant and worthy idea, but poorly executed.

The biggest problem is the book, which relies far too heavily on narrative instead of action to move the story along. Very few playwrights can use third-person narrative effectively, and Warrior is a clear example of how not to use the device. Many moments that could be fiercely intense are told rather than shown, while less interesting moments that could be glossed over are dramatized for no obvious reason.

And while a good score can frequently compensate for a weak book, Warrior's songs are tragically lacking in drama. While the music is lovely and evocative of the story's many times and places, the lyrics are at best clichéd and at worst nonsensical. Equally frustrating is the placement of the songs, which can only be described as rather like watching a dancer kick on the upbeat instead of the down: many of the story's most dramatic moments are mentioned only in narrative, while weaker scenes get repetitive and banal songs. The story of this legendary juggernaut stumbles where it should gallop, and rarely reaches the emotional peaks it could.

It is a true testament to the tight and powerful cast, then, that they are able to mine some genuinely powerful emotion from such a misguided script and score. Deven May exudes strength and bravado as the legendary Thorpe, making his downward spiral truly tragic as his confidence slowly fades. After earning a reputation as a wonderful comedian in many productions of Bat Boy, it is wonderful to see him take a powerfully dramatic turn and fly with it. Marla Schaffel is sensual and seductive as Whiskey (yes, the drink), Thorpe's only constant love and eventual downfall, but is given far too little to do for her many talents, and has to work with much of the show's weakest material. But as she proved in Jonestown, The Musical, she is wonderfully adept at spinning straw into gold, and she makes her scenes work by pure force of will. Devilishly handsome Brian Charles Rooney, late of The Threepenny Opera, is also tragically underused, but makes the most of his brief role and shows off more colors of his amazing voice. Sherie Austin is appropriately beautiful as Thorpe's first love and wife, but doesn't quite overcome the weaknesses in the book as well as the other leads do. The rest of the ensemble is appropriately versatile, jumping quickly from role to role while rarely leaving the stage.

In fact, if there is any problem with the casting, it would be in the normally laudable practice of color-blind casting. One of the many hurdles Thorpe struggled to overcome was the early 20th prejudice against Native Americans, and while Deven May is wonderfully intense and dramatic as Thorpe, it is somewhat jarring (and distracting) to hear characters call a very Caucasian actor "redskin." The excellence of Mr. May's performance and the ethics of casting a play "color-blind" when color is a plot point can be an excellent discussion point for years to come.

Jim Thorpe deserves a searing musical drama to introduce his many accomplishments and tragedies to a new generation. While the talented cast raises the emotional stakes, Warrior isn't the powerhouse it could be, and falls tragically flat.