‘The Outsiders’ musical tour muscles its way to Chicago
“The Outsiders” — 3.5 stars
Director Danya Taymor’s stagecraft is truly the major star of “The Outsiders.” This hit four-time 2024 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s beloved 1967 coming-of-age novel is now making an emotional and aggressively confident Chicago touring debut at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.
Taymor, a niece of “The Lion King” director Julie Taymor, proves herself to be another storytelling master of deceptively simple means. Often just using wooden planks, tires and other items you’d find in a junkyard, Danya Taymor and her production design team industriously conjure up many thrilling physical and dramatic moments on a grandly cinematic scale.
Told from the point of view of the orphaned writer Ponyboy Curtis (Nolan White), “The Outsiders” focuses on a heightened class war in Tulsa, Oklahoma, between the poorer and scrappier “Greaser” teens versus the wealthier and brutish “Socs” (likely a shortened and derogatory term for socialites). Costume designer Sarafina Bush’s period work really differentiates the divide via preppier outfits for the Socs and the grittier Greaser gear.
Living with his similarly grieving older brothers Darrel (Travis Roy Rogers) and “Sodapop” (Corbin Drew Ross), the 14-year-old Ponyboy goes on to experience and recount even more tragedies by the show’s end.
The conflict really ramps up when the bullying Soc Bob (understudy Dante D’Antonio on opening night) catches his girlfriend, Cherry Valance (Emma Hearn), having a meeting-of-the-minds conversation with Ponyboy at a movie drive-in. Already anticipating more violence, Ponyboy’s best friend Johnny Cade (Bonale Fambrini) gets a switchblade from their gang leader Dallas Winston (Tyler Jordan Wesley) with murderous consequences.
Book writers Adam Rapp and Justin Levine do a suitable job in adapting all the dramatic twists and turns of both Hinton’s novel and director Francis Ford Coppola’s acclaimed 1983 film adaptation. Some die-hard musical theater fans might detect some dramatic and thematic gang retreads from “West Side Story,” but “The Outsiders” is different enough to strongly stand on its own.
Not quite as effective is the first-time stage score by the Texas folk-rock band Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, in collaboration with Levine). Some of the songs feel a tad undercooked in storytelling placement and just expressing the characters’ feelings via narration.
But all the authors’ work certainly gives the cast a lot of emotional and vocal material to sink their teeth into, and the touring cast more than delivers their youthful characters’ rage, fear and despondency. The hard-working cast are also a major collaborative part of Taymor’s Tony Award-winning theatrical and storytelling vision.
Rather than glorifying violence, you’ll often marvel (and flinch) at the guttural Tony Award-winning sound design of Cody Spencer and sound effects specialist Taylor Bense. Thrown punches, brutal kicks and even drowning effects are all disturbingly amplified to embolden the impressive acrobatic choreography of Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman.
Brian MacDevitt’s Tony Award-winning lighting design is also often a jolting experience, and it’s especially effective in the amazing slow-motion rumble in the park sequence complete with an onstage rain downpour. This Act II moment has been the buzz of “The Outsiders” since its debut, and it more than lives up to the hype.
But Taymor’s seemingly simple stagecraft is also surrounded by high-tech wizardry, too. The unit set design of AMP with Tatiana Kahvegian is often filled with skillfully sophisticated projections to ramp up the emotional temperature and to give off a better sense of place in each scene.
Though not quite perfect with its script and score, “The Outsiders” continually wows on tour with Taymor and her design team’s thrilling stagecraft. Add to that an energetic acting ensemble to execute it all with verve and precision, and you can see why this Tony Award winner for Best Musical has become a contemporary theater hit.
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Location: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St., Chicago, (312) 977-1700, BroadwayInChicago.com
Showtimes: 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday, extra 6:30 p.m. show Sunday, Feb. 15; runs through Feb. 22
Running time: About 2 hours, 25 minutes with intermission
Parking: Area pay garages and limited metered street parking
Tickets: $49-$295.05
Rating: Profanity, lots of physical violence and a rude sexual gesture