If country music has a superpower, it’s the ability to spin conventions and catchphrases into affecting narratives. The book for “Music City,” a terrific new jukebox show mining the JT Harding catalog, essentially does the same thing on a larger scale.
While Harding’s name might not resonate, his songs have scored sizable plays on streaming services: He is a co-writer of Uncle Kracker’s “Smile,” Blake Shelton’s “Sangria” and Keith Urban’s “Somewhere in My Car.” All of those songs turn up in “Music City,” a rollicking good time that understands contemporary country music — the style and the lifestyle — in a way we don’t often see on New York theater stages.
For this Bedlam production, the director Eric Tucker and the scenic designer Clifton Chadick have turned the West End Theater into the Wicked Tickle, a homey Nashville joint specializing in open mics (and evoking that city’s real-life Bluebird Cafe). One such session is underway as audience members file in and take their seats — ticket holders can sign up for a slot in that preshow section and basically warm up the room for the characters.
The focus of our attention are the imaginatively named TJ (Stephen Michael Spencer), an outgoing singer-songwriter with a knack for upbeat tunes, and 23 (Casey Shuler), a soulful newcomer with a crack in her voice and a tear in her beer — largely because of the strain of dealing with her addict mother (Leenya Rideout). The two young strivers decide to try writing songs together, and Peter Zinn’s book goes exactly where you think it’s going to go, with antagonists (both played by Andrew Rothenberg) setting up some speed bumps along the way: Bakerman, a drug dealer TJ is indebted to, and Stucky Stiles, a behatted, creatively adrift country star reminiscent of Strings McCrane in “Hold On to Me Darling.”
“Music City” is not lacking for earworms (which also include two numbers written for the show and four that had not been previously recorded), but it also understands that almost as important as the songs is how they came to be. TJ and 23 express themselves through music — it is who they are — so when Stucky comes fishing for new material, they must choose who will get to deliver these little pieces of their heart.
The only caveat in this very effectively staged production is the superfluous, distracting choreography by John Heginbotham (Daniel Fish’s “Oklahoma!”), but it is kept to a minimum. “Music City” is a good example of a jukebox done well, highlighting an industry that values songwriting craftsmanship as well as its commercial value and even revisiting some of the questions that were raised in David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic”: What does music mean to the people who are passionate about it? How do you measure success?
Coincidentally, these issues also surface in Jessica Goldberg’s frustrating new one-act play, “Babe,” the latest New Group production.
A key question comes up early: “Do you have a soul?” Gus (Arliss Howard), a hotshot producer and truffle hound, directs it at Katherine (Gracie McGraw), who is interviewing for a junior A&R position. He is a familiar type: A successful man in high standing of the establishment he claims to disdain, a would-be iconoclast who is a run-of-the-mill jerk — and not as smart as he thinks he is.
Gus’s right hand, Abigail (Marisa Tomei), sits in on the interview, and we are meant to understand that she most definitely has a soul, even if she compromises it daily to keep her job. She playfully attempts to dissuade her boss from sliding into his good ol’ rock ’n’ roll boy shtick with Katherine, but it’s obvious that Abby, who has been working with Gus for 32 years, will never put up real objections.
“Babe” seems to imply that a soul — like extended warranty coverage for a new car — is an unnecessary extra in the music industry. But the play, which is as wobbly as the usually reliable Tomei’s inexplicably mannered performance, doesn’t make much of that theme, or of anything else, for that matter. It just drops ideas and doesn’t exploit them. (Goldberg is an established screenwriter, who created the Hulu show “The Path,” but her theater roots go way back — the New Group presented her play “Good Thing” in 2001.)
Just as important to Abby as a character is that she has ears, having once discovered the wild rocker and future superstar Kat Wonder (also McGraw). And now there she is, smiling gamely as Gus takes credit for the discovery. (Scott Elliott’s production features music by the long-running trio Betty.)
Goldberg sets up two conflicts that have long run through — and fed — rock ’n’ roll: the clash of generations and the battle of the sexes, and Katherine embodies both. They are part of the foundational myths of rock that have come under closer scrutiny in recent decades: Where is the line between sexy and sexism? Who benefits from ids running free? “If I want to tell you you have a nice ass, I’ll tell you, you have a nice ass,” Gus later informs Katherine, adding an expletive for emphasis.
Katherine and Gus are unpleasant archetypes on a collision course from the get-go — in the first scene she corrects him with “I identify as a woman” after he calls her a “smart girl.”
But their tension bursts only toward the end of the show, in a plot twist with unexplored dramatic potential. This is all the more frustrating because it offers new insights into Abigail, who had until then been something of a cipher, and opens up the story to something that could sustain a whole extra act. As it is, “Babe” is unconvincingly stitched together — a demo rather than a finished song, let alone an album.
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