Playwright: Randal Myler and Mark Harelik. At: Filament Theatre at the Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport Ave. Tickets: 773-935-6875; www.filamenttheatre.org; $22. Runs through: July 8
There’s no denying that the life of Hiram “Hank” Williams was a hard one, and his death was the sorriest that anyone could wish on the artist responsible for turning “hillbilly” ballads rarely heard above the Mason-Dixon line into the internationally acclaimed musical genre today designated “country” music. Still, it was his voice—coming over the radio in the depths of the Great Depression—that offered citizens throughout the United States the grim assurance, “Don’t worry about nothing, because it ain’t gonna turn out right nohow.”
His canon constitutes standard repertoire for country musicians to this day. A guitarist who can’t croon “Your Cheatin’ Heart” or “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” in three different keys is probably a Yankee pretender, as is any band of would-be pickers without “Move It On Over” or “Setting The Woods On Fire” on their permanent playlist. It wasn’t all honky-tonk, however—”I Saw The Light” is a staple of rural church services and revival meetings from Texas to Minnesota.
Such is the legacy of the quiet boy with the crippled back celebrated in Randal Myler and Mark Harelik’s revue with text, which traces their reluctant hero’s fortunes from his early youth, learning the blues from his neighbor, Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, followed by his marriage to an ambitious (but marginally talented) Opry-wannabe—a match leading to his discovery and subsequent tours with the “Louisiana Hayride” revue. We also witness his increasing dependence on a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals washed down with moonshine-grade alcohol, ending in his death from heart failure at the age of 29 in the back seat of a car on the road to a gig.
Some of these chronicles are narrated—story-theater style—by auxiliary characters, but the major part of the two-and-a-half-hour evening is devoted to a roster of Williams classics, performed with just the correct amount of down-home swagger by a quartet of cheerful sidemen backing the suspiciously healthy-looking Williams portrayed by Peter Oyloe. Oyloe sings up a storm and yodels right smartly, but has yet to find the “darkness” we are told lurks beneath the passive exterior of this introverted genius. That said, the show nevertheless generates Southern-bred nostalgia almost overflowing its tiny space. Royal George, are you listening? This could be your cabaret room’s answer to that other toe-tapping lesson in U.S. music history over at the Apollo.