Thanks to music and song, the story fictionalized by James Agee about his father’s death and how it affected him and family is more than a pastiche of various ways of dramatizing it. Still, the brand new-musical Knoxville has a number of dramatic antecedents. Happily, they’re mixed well in Frank Galati’s script and his direction of it.
“Knoxville” is a grand opening song that introduces the city in 1915 and a lot of townspeople who will figure in the play. It is a Tennessee equivalent of Grovers Corner in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.
Some of the presentation consists of classic oral interpretation of literature methods.There’s a somewhat Wilder-like narrator-stage-manager. He’s the Author (Agee). Having had a few drinks, he’s in NYC typing away at his story. It becomes, like Tennessee Williams’s memory play, one he’ll follow through commenting on or entering into as it unfolds. He sees himself as his young self, Rufus Follet.
The focus is on Rufus stopping into a pub with his father Jay on their way home from a movie together. Time together is not unusual. (Nor is Jay sneaking out again alone at night.)
Rufus’s lovely mother Mary tries not to show she’s anxious, but soon she has another reason to be. Jay’s jealous brother Ralph, an alcoholic, tells Jay his father’s had a heart attack and he must go to him. When he leaves, worried Mary prays for the father, not realizing Ralph was drinking when he exaggerated the father’s condition. It is Jay who dies—of a car accident on the way home.
When his dad was away, Rufus’s great aunt Hannah had taken him shopping and got him a cap he prized. Later he will be upset because all other members of the family were dealing with the news of Jay’s death and how to help Mary as well as how to prepare for the funeral. Mary is doubly devastated because she’s been wondering if Jay had been drinking, leading to the fatality. All the relatives (except Ralph) try to comfort her and each other.
Rufus learns about his father just as he has awakened and intended to show him the new cap. His older self realizes that he didn’t quite “get” the seriousness of Jay’s death and the family situation, especially his mother’s. Nor was her heart eased, because of the attitude of the priest who appeared at the funeral. But a very positive ending came about—in Rufus’s understanding of Mary and the importance of his father’s death in all the family relationships, not excluding his.
The acting of this story at Asolo Rep is so uniformly fine that it is impossible to detail each performance in a brief review. There’s not a disappointing characterization and the endurance of young Jack Casey as Rufus is particularly admirable. Knoxville is full of real human beings. Luckily, they can sing quite well. They have to, as this drama is largely sung-through as operetta or folk-opera.
This staging of Knoxville is not perfect, however. There’s too much musical activity—emphasis on activity—throughout on both sides of the stage that often draws attention away from the dramatic happenings. I also am not sure what that big oval thing in the background is supposed to be. It reminded me of what a tubular version of the St. Louis Gateway Arch might look like if stretched to an oval. I haven’t seen anything like it in picture postcards of the Tennessee city about 1915. Maybe it is something that suggests the Author’s NYC, but if so, why? It doesn’t seem to jibe with the abundance of all kinds of dense color and lighting throughout. Too bad, because Asolo Rep has both magnificent scene shop and personnel that could equal Broadway tech presentation.
