11th Hour Theatre's World Premiere of BIG RED SUN shoots for the stars

Pulling off a world premiere original musical, in a town like Philadelphia, feels like a huge feat. 11th Hour Theatre Company’s BIG RED SUN is an immense production: these are from-scratch songs, original arrangements with a five-piece band on stage, over two hours of acting and singing in perfect harmony with live instrumentation, constant costume changes and small set shifts, and that’s all just the technical. Then, add a sweeping inter-generational narrative characterized by self-discovery, strained familial relationships filled with angst and rage, and a perhaps too-grand finishing theme of ‘the truth you seek is not always what you’ll find, but it’s still worth its pursuit.” I think maybe that’s what’s unsettling about this magnificently-executed show – it might be trying to be too many things, all at once.

John Jiler and Georgia Stitt are the authors, Jiler handling the book with Stitt arranging and orchestrating. Jiler has worked with 11th Hour (2009) and Wilma Theatre (1997) to bring his Avenue X to the stage, which is significant, because this work aims at the same era of America, as well as some of the same themes. Avenue X is an a cappella musical featuring an Italian in Brooklyn whose unlikely friendship with an African American in 1963 outlines a narrative of cross-racial harmony stoked by a love for music, especially music of a certain era (think awe at emerging genres and the disintegration of previously-held musical norms).

So that’s all here in Big Red Sun, too, with a musical score that embraces post-WWII sounds at the onset of the ‘60s. In John Timpane’s preview of the musical, Jiler says “I was inspired by the story of my dad, who came home after World War Two, when culture and music were changing so rapidly. We went from Glenn Miller in a powder blue tux to Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar with his teeth in about five minutes.” Jazz and rock ‘n roll were shocking the squares. You could say our protagonist and his son, Eddie and Harry Daimler, were also drawn to the allure of evolving popular music trends. As a result, this musical is full of jazz and scat, Klezmer and traditionally Jewish music, swing, doo-wop and more.

Harry Daimler is played by Kyle Segarra, a young suburban teenager raised by his mother. Harry believes what he’s been told by his mother his entire young life – that his father was killed with honor serving his country on the bloody fields and forests of France. Kyle’s also a budding singer and songwriter, and it’s at a town picnic, where he’s set to perform a song at a memorial ceremony for fallen soldiers, that he starts to wonder if his mom has been misleading him. He begins to realize that his father is alive and well, having left him and his mother when he was an infant. Harry’s deep, unforgiving desire to make amends with his estranged father fuels the narrative of Big Red Sun, but also traps the story into creating some kind of needed resolution at its finish, which never really arrives.

The Judaic content is, unfortunately, not fully realized or artfully employed. There are most definitely inspiring Jewish Americans who went to fight Hitler, but Eddie isn’t really one of those. Eddie, his wife Helen, and a wonderful character named James L. Johnson (played warmly by Rob Tucker) were a musical trio in the pre-war ‘40s – in fact, Harry is obsessed with a vinyl pressing of the trio’s recordings. Eddie initially jumps into service thinking he'll perform in a service band and it’ll be a big gig for exposure, that he’ll come home with a name, a following, a foot in the door of pop notoriety. But then his Jewish identity catches his conscience when he’s in Europe and he hears stories of shallow graves and mass murders. He flips and commits a crime of the conscience, returning home believing himself a monster, a man incapable of loving a wife and young child.

In one scene, Harry finds his dad’s Star of David necklace and turns to his mother asking, “Am I a Jew?” His mother, thoughtfully, answers that he can be whatever he wants to be. But other than that exchange and the PTSD of Eddie’s demons from war, the enjoyable Jewish-themed moments come with song. A fun number of “Sing, Schmuel, Sing,” which precipitates Harry’s interest in a Bar Mitzvah of his own and includes some charming dancing, finds the most soul in mining Judaism and WWII.

Easily, the most poignant moments come when Harry finds Eddie singing in a club in Seattle, and when Harry confronts his mother upon hearing that his father is in fact alive. Those are the plot elements that rang with most resonance. Even if Segarra’s “Web of Lies” feels a little on the screamy side and dwells too long in teenage rage. The tracklist of the show doesn’t necessarily reflect the progression of the production in that a number of adjacent and intermediary tunes aren’t listed. But “Mister Blue,” a song Harry pulls out of James Johnson, was a delight. And “To The Top,” the number where the emerging trio’s early stardom becomes evident, is a contagious, swinging jazz romp.

The band and cast pull it all off with might and conviction. There are no weak links, really, save for a few flat moments that disappear quickly. Like any new art that’s been in the works since John Jiler met Georgia Stitt at the Wilma for Avenue X in 1997, there’s room for growth, improvement, evolution, and successful mutations. With that said, there’s just a hint of patriotism, jingoism, and military service mythology that just falls flat in 2018. Especially for folks born in the ‘70s and afterwards. And if you love swinging jazz and proto-rock and roll, this will tickle your hearstrings, but the reaches towards rock and roll sounds felt tame. 11th Hour is an incredible company and asset to Philadelphia’s theatrical landscape and their work should be supported, here on a rare mainstage production (through June 17th) and well into their Next Step Concert Series.