'Fire' burns with veracity, heart and spontaneity

Revue celebrates people, music of Appalachian mines

By Chris Jones
Tribune theater critic

May 19 2007

"Y'all wanna hear something crazy?," says one of the mournful-voiced, coal-blackened Appalachian characters in Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman's "Fire on the Mountain" at the Northlight Theatre. "I love this mine."

Crazy, indeed -- if you take the collection of old-time, blues-and-bluegrass mining songs that make up this emotionally rich and superbly sung revue as your evidence. For regardless of the nation or the era, the music of the mine invariably has been suffused with the lyrics of disaster. Especially in West Virginia.

Lyrics tell of toil ("Hard Working Miner"), pitch-black working conditions ("Dark as a Dungeon"), disease ("Black Lung"), exploitational employers ("Which Side Are You On?") and death ("Sprinkle Coal Dust on My Grave"). And given that we now get excised over the slightest whiff of second-hand cigarette smoke, the reality that we sent generation after generation deep into the Appalachian hills to breathe coal dust to earn their meager crusts is hardly the proudest legacy of the industrial revolution.

And yet the human spirit proves resilient. Banded together in families and unions, workers come to cherish their lot, even if it's underground. Emerging from the mine, men could still see the "Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia." And, as one emotionally stirring song succinctly puts it at the end of this show, "They'll Never Keep Us Down."

Like a lot of Myler's work, "Fire on the Mountain" is notable for its whiff of total authenticity. I've seen a lot of Myler's shows, which he usually directs himself, in theaters in different parts of the country. Rarely do you see an actor with an affected sense or a lack of musical credibility. Rarely do you see an actor who looks like an actor. Myler's people look like workers.

It's lighter and less political, perhaps, but Myler's oeuvre still has a lot in common with that of Studs Terkel. Whether set at the Vietnam Wall or on a lonely Western highway, these shows are mostly tributes to the real music of working Americans.

"Fire on the Mountain" is a 90-minute revue. There's neither a sophisticated book nor a score of original compositions. This is a gently paced, single-set celebration of the people and the musical heritage of Appalachian mine communities. That's it. And to have a good time, you'll need an affinity for and interest in this music.

These are tough roles to cast (performers sing and play), and almost everyone here has done the show before -- the physical aspects of the show come from the Seattle Repertory Theatre. But when you've got "Mississippi" Charles Bevel (best known for Myler's "It Ain't Nothing but the Blues") in the house, you've got a show with veracity, heart and spontaneity.

But Bevel's bluesy singing is just one of the attractions here. The Broadway actor Jason Edwards performs this music superbly. And the strong-jawed Lee Morgan looks like a man who could go down a mine and live to sing a tale.

In one of the few spoken sequences here, a father sends his son back to school, instead of letting him follow his father (and grandfather) into a mine. It sounds trite in description. But it got me in the gut.

"It stops here," asserts the father, even as his son craves the pit's masculine validation. Thank God, you think, as the young fellow heads back to school. The music of the mine might stir the soul. But the dangers are double and the pleasures are few.