Lillias White and Scott Wakefield in Texas in Paris at The York Theatre Company, New York. Picture: Carol Rosegg
Texas in Paris continues at The York Theatre Company, New York until 1 March.
Star rating: 3 stars ***
The deep churnings of soul and emotion that can make folk music so compelling well inform Texas in Paris, a new Off-Broadway musical play whose score overflows with American spirituals, cowboy songs and country hymns. Playwright Alan Govenar, a folklorist and documentary filmmaker, has also created a script that examines in low-key but affecting fashion the seemingly inherent racism that still abides in the United States.
His play is based on two real-life people – non-professional singing talents – that he came to know well stemming from his work as a radio producer exploring “everyday music” throughout Texas.
One is John Burrus, a ranch cowboy who made his living breaking horses; the other is Osceola Mays, a widowed, retired black domestic who worked in Dallas. As a result of recordings he made of their singing, the two were invited to Paris in 1979 to perform a series of concerts together at the Maison des Cultures du Monde.
They are two strangers thrown together in a strange environment, and from that situation, Govenar builds his play. Scenes alternate between songs being performed in concert and conversations between the two or monologues expressing their thoughts when they are not performing.
John is taciturn, uncomfortable in Paris, missing his wife and food back home. He also is somewhat off-balance in the presence of Osceola, his life having kept him from intermingling closely with black people. “We keep to our kind… and you keep to yours. It’s just the way it been done,” John tells Osceola.
On the other hand, Osceola is loquacious and – after growing up a child terrified of white people and years of working for them – finds Paris liberating. Eventually, she and John, through their conversations, the revealing of their life stories and the music they sing in concert, reach an understanding of their common humanity and achieve a friendship that recognises race but is not inhibited by it.
Under Akin Babatunde’s sensitive direction, the production is kept simple and direct. Two kitchen chairs and a small table, occasionally carried on and off stage, make up the set, while videos projected at the rear establish various locations, such as the airport where John and Osceola first meet and the Parisian settings they visit.
The impact of the show eventually depends on the personality and talents of its two performers, Lillias White and Scott Wakefield. And they bring Osceola and John to life with a magnetic vibrancy and conviction, whether singing or speaking the script’s easy dialogue.
Wakefield accompanies his ingratiating vocals primarily with his guitar, telling stories of cowboy life, death and faith in such ballads as ‘Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie’, ‘Power of the Blood’ and ‘When the Work’s All Done in the Fall’. He also plays a banjo and harmonica.
While White, a Tony Award winner for The Life, occasionally sings along with Wakefield’s guitar, most of her songs are done a cappella. But her gyrating body, hand-clapping and foot-stomping augment her songs with the force of a symphony orchestra. She is a powerful one-woman band, bringing passion and meaning to such gospel-fuelled pieces as ‘All God’s Children Got Shoes’, ‘Oh, Freedom’ and the climactic ‘When the Saints Go Marchin’ In’.
Together, White and Wakefield go through more than two dozen musical numbers, well shaped under Amy Jones‘ musical supervision.
Texas in Paris (that, by the way, is indeed the title; the redundant Texas in Paris Texas in Paris, which I reported as the title in an earlier dispatch, was a typo in the press material) may be a slight work and somewhat schematic in the development of its story. Still, the affection and respect Govenar feels for his characters is involving, his message resonant, and the venerable music he brings to the stage is revivifying, whether you find the songs familiar or are hearing them for the first time.
Ron Cohen
Readers may also be interested in:
Lady, Be Good – Encores! – New York City Center – Review
Into the Woods – Roundabout Theatre Company, New York – Review
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