STONE CROSSED – Studio Concept Album (Broadway Records – BR-DIG19421)
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
With concept, book, music and lyrics by Philip David Stern, this is a brand new musical with oomph!
The Concept: It’s the Stone Age, and the land of Arkose is divided into two sides by a fault line. Following the teachings from their ancestors and paintings on cave walls, each believes that the other is dangerous, and so stay away from each other; keeping to their own side. Stone Crossed tells the story of two young lovers whose lives are changed forever when they inadvertently cross the divide. Falling instantly in love, Stoney and Jewel discover that they are more the same than they are different, despite what they had been taught to believe and start to question what has been painted in stone.
Now, I have to admit, when I read that I thought – oh dear, here we go. Another loud rock musical that makes no sense whatsoever. But I was wrong. It’s basically a pre-historic Romeo and Juliet with drama and laughs along the way. The concept (above) is all I am going to share with you, as far as the story is concerned, as there is a lovely PDF with the full synopsis included with this album. However, the songs get slightly darker emotionally towards the end with ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Breathe’ pointing us perhaps to a bit of a sad ending? You’ll have to buy it to find out!
The amazing cast includes: Antonio Cipriano, Krystina Alabado, Jon Rua, Celia Rose Gooding, Will Connolly, Elle McLemore, Samantha Williams, Gabi Campo and Telly Leung. There are 22 tracks on the album and sometimes that can seems like a bit of overkill but, in this instance, the time just flies by.
Philip David Stern has achieved an outstanding feat to have conceived and written this entire work, then to have it recorded remotely during the pandemic, with the finished product sound as if the cast were together in one recording studio with the band and ensemble. It’s simply genius.
I’d love to see this go further and to get an actual staging one day – can imagine it being quite a hit.
Nick Wakeham
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