Texas is big sky country. It’s the first thing I reveled in after fleeing from the Pacific Northwest’s oppressive cloud coverage. Driving into town, gazing at the sunset’s deep purples and oranges in the rearview mirror. Walking in the red-streaked dawn, or tracking storms that actually move across blue skies. Even now, I thrill at seeing the depth of stars in the velvet night.
The Outsiders isn’t set in Texas, but sometimes Oklahoma’s close enough to share those skies. At least the characters make it feel that way. In this Broadway roadshow, Ponyboy Curtis and Cherry Valance echo my joy as they stare into projected galaxies. Johnny Cade waxes poetic over a peachy sunrise. Hana S. Kim’s projections and Brian MacDevitt’s light design won a deserved Tony award for its 2024 production, which rolled into Bass Concert Hall last week for a limited Broadway in Austin run. Their heavenly sphere reflects the vastness of The Outsiders’ Greaser dreams, even while AMP and Tatiana Kahvegian’s Tony-nominated single-silhouette set reveals the restriction of the characters’ earthly domain. The world feels expansive, even if the Tulsa setting feels too small for such large rivalries. But at least there are the skies, reminding us that maybe there’s an escape somewhere.
S.E. Hinton was 16 when she wrote the 1967 novel about Tulsa’s eastside/westside rivalry between the poor Greasers and well-off Socs. In the musical, which premiered in San Diego before moving to Broadway, Adam Rapp and Justin Levine’s book delves into Hinton’s words, dropping quotes verbatim alongside expanded Greaser backstories. With this additional context, book badboy Dallas Winston faces racial discrimination, and Sodapop Curtis isn’t just a pretty face – he endures heartbreak to showcase softness. These small changes don’t hurt the main story, but create narrative motifs – a running train, motes of dust, a Charles Dickens graveyard – that tighten up any loose threads, making room for the musical to stretch into spectacle. Texas natives Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, who perform as folk duo Jamestown Revival, contribute genre-hopping songs capturing a Sixties flashpoint, melding rock and folk into melodies that would work fine on any modern indie album.
It’s tempting to say the production is gimmicky. It throws almost everything a show can throw at an audience. Projected images, scenes lit by flashlight, a mega-morphing transformative set, bombastic noise, flash strobing, weather effects, sparkling floor grit for choreo – seriously, I could write more, but these are just some of the cavalcade of stage elements executed throughout the runtime. Maybe they are gimmicks. But maybe they’re just the pure marriage between story and design. During a climactic fight scene between the gangs, all the stops were pulled out as rain poured, light flashes burned retinas through the most extreme violence, and the Kuperman Brothers’ choreography got experimental through slow motion and greyed-out lighting. Sure, my inner cynic didn’t want to love that much obvious stagecraft, but my inner softie couldn’t resist. I was thrilled, heart in my throat as I watched what happens when creators fully lean into the possibilities of theatrical magic.
This wild musical swing wouldn’t hold together without powerful leadership from Ponyboy, the 14-year-old narrator of the original novel. If Ponyboy rings false, nothing else works. Luckily, Nolan White’s performance kept the musical firmly in reality. Rooting the story with a wry fragility, Ponyboy’s observations played as wise and heartbreaking. His fourth wall breaks and meta commentary could be grating in the wrong hands, but White’s hangdog sensibility and pure vocals enraptured the audience. He believably navigated an arc from childish posturing to utter despair. When he wept, I wept, because I forgot this boy wasn’t actually mourning for lost innocence.
The natural charisma radiated through much of the cast, including Tyler Jordan Wesley’s bold Dallas and Travis Roy Rogers’ reluctant parent figure Darrel. As Dallas, Wesley angrily belted his numbers, filled with scorching rebellion. It only heightened his final turn in the song “Little Brother.” There, Wesley proved he’s more than a one-trick performer, transitioning to a sorrowful, dynamic whisper. He shifted from soul to blues, a spectrum of power in a single role. Where Wesley showed a rocking side, Rogers made his professional debut as a hardbitten country star through Darrel’s songs, all bitterness and twang. Both book and musical cite the haunted Johnny Cade as the soul of the Greasers, and while he wasn’t the musical’s linchpin (again, that’s Ponyboy’s job), Bonale Fambrini did play a tragic romantic hero. His solo “Stay Gold” was the musical highlight, a stripped-down guitar piece that stands as a stellar song outside of the musical theatre label.
There are so many ways The Outsiders shouldn’t work. It should owe too much to the visual stylings of West Side Story, or the choreography of Newsies. But somehow, it breaks those comparative shackles to stand tall. It escapes the confines of an adapted production, and flies upward into a transcendent musical experience. I think the Greasers would be proud to become something so much greater than the sum of their parts. They fill the Broadway sky, earning their ride into the sunset.