Pioneer Press
May 24, 2007

'Fire' burns bright with human truth

By CATEY SULLIVAN Contributor

"All the trouble that I live with / Fire that big ain't never been lit."

So goes one of the haunting, elegiac lyrics to "Been in the Storm So Long," a song of earthy, unforgettable poetry that "Mississippi" Charles Bevel instills with the mournful spirit of a refrain echoing up from the depths of an underworld cavern: "From what I need/and what I'm paid/A road that long ain't never been laid."

It's a shiver-inducing moment in Northlight Theatre's "Fire on the Mountain," a musical revue that seamlessly blends history, music, tragedy and steel-spined grit to tell the hardscrabble story of the country's coal miners.

Created by Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman, "Fire on the Mountain" is a paean not just to miners, but to a way of life defined by rough beauty, hard labor and the sort of soul-sustaining dignity that allows a man to walk tall even after decades hunched miles underground, hacking coal from the unforgiving veins of the Appalachian range. "Fire on the Mountain" captures a bruising sublimity that could be the underside of an Ansel Adams print: a dark world hidden by purple mountains majesty. Myler, who also directs, digs deep, unearthing the ancestral bones of country music and the bloody history of coal miners killed not only by black lung and mine explosions, but by bullets fired off by the National Guardsmen sent to crush unions.

With a cast of nine, the music and its context takes indelible hold, ballads, foot-stompers and dirges alike making triumphs and sorrows come to life with imagery that sticks to the mind like coal dust under a miner's nails.

This is not the slick, pop-country genre of Dolly or Reba. It's far older, rooted in the ancient dirt that both nurtures life in the Virginia hollows until it slides in a denuding, destructive wash down to the Gulf of Mexico as mountain tops are strip-mined down to ugly, barren wastelands.

And while this is technically a musical revue, it's not really musical theater. The songs are without artifice or stage business. The production values are bedrock of simple, heart-spun and home-spun tales of working, loving and dying. The music is sometimes bitter, bearing witness to money-saving, life-taking safety shortcuts favored by coal magnates, and the endless, despairing cycle of being forced to sell one's soul to the company store. But it is also soaring and sublime as the cast unleashes songs of unvanquished pride, of brilliant morning stars and of sweet spring flowers.

Adding visual impact to the music is a series of slides projected on giant screens. Designed by Myler, the stark, black and white images capture the eyes of children pulled from grammar school in order to work 10-hour shifts killing rats in the mines; of the undulating exquisiteness of an Appalachian spring, of the universal weariness of men returning, faces like old maps, races made indistinguishable by coatings of coal dust, to open air at the end of the day and of dancers, eyes sparkling, heels in the air, at Saturday night socials.

"Fire on the Mountain" seems lit from within, both by the stories and the songs of the people it honors. It's honor that comes without romance or varnish - the script is taken directly from interviews with miners and their families. When they talk about earning an extra $1.50 for retrieving "bodies so crushed you couldn't tell who they was" after an explosion, the harsh reality of their world is revealed in all its ugliness.

But beauty lies in truth, and so "Fire on the Mountain" is that rarest of theatrical gems: A knockout of unwavering authenticity.