Here's yet another fictitious rock band to join the (im)mortal roster that includes Spinal Tap, Josie and The Pussycats, Sweetwater and The Wonders. It's called Danger Seven and it emanates from Lansing, Michigan, in Actors Theater of Louisville's original new rock musical.
Personified by a versatile cast of five, the band blasts through songs taking them from rock worship in kindergarten -- when parents forbade listening to the Rolling Stones and Alice Cooper -- through cozy clichés of success, breakup, and renewal. That's about the time the "pressures of turning 30" are soon to be upon them.
Somewhat as Cole Porter's song asked, "What is This Thing Called Love?," the four authors of this collaboration seek to know what rock and roll is. They throw out some suggestions (none definitive), sometimes through the ponderous, humorous findings of a "Dr. Professor Science."
What it seems to boil down to is a combination of attitude, sex, drugs, danger, four basic chords and several vowel sounds, angst, excess, swagger, and pretension. Those less favorably disposed to the genre are likely to hear it as self-indulgent noise.
Throwing themselves into their music and vignettes with admirable skill and enthusiasm are David Hanbury (guitar), the charismatic leader of the pack; Jeremy Lee Cudd (drums), Rebecca Hart (bass and guitar), Ami Jhaveri (bass), and Jon Spurney (guitar).
ATL staffers Matt Callahan (resident sound designer), Sean Daniels (associate artistic director), and Julie Felise Dubiner (resident dramaturg) conceived the piece along with Hanbury, who won praise as Hedwig last year in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Daniels directed that show as well as this nostalgic rock saga.
The mythical band's members find rock a comforting crutch as they navigate through adolescent years of low self esteem (cue "Low Self Opinion" by Henry Rollins) and romantic and workplace trials and tribulations as they grow older. It's hard to think of any rock group that isn't fleetingly mentioned as the show -- on set designer Michael B. Raiford's platform stage framed with iconic album covers -- barrels through everything from Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" to "Proud Mary," "That's All Right" and "Street-Fighting Man." Quick name drops cover Guns and Roses, Kiss, Sex Pistols, Bon Jovi, The Clash, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Kurt Cobain, Elvis (both Presley and Costello), Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead (one of the funniest takes), Jimi Hendrix, and Woodstock. Did anyone hear the Beatles in all this?
The music is ear-splitting with unintelligible lyrics on nearly all the pieces. Nothing unusual there. And the pounding beat had some audience members swaying in their seats. Some got up to dance in the aisles. No doubt the show is a candidate for other venues where it should receive a similar reception.
