A stage musical version of The Outsiders may sound like a daffy gag from an episode of The Simpsons but the result is actually a dazzling, thrilling, and moving achievement.
The winner of Best Musical at the 2024 Tony Awards, The Outsiders succeeds as a cohesive, expertly realised whole. A direct descendant of West Side Story (there is even a character equivalent to Anybody’s), The Outsiders ramps up the realism and flattens out the ballet, delivering engaging storytelling that is all the more compelling for its sheer believability.
A tight company of 17 triple threats create memorable characters rooted vividly in the time and place of Tulsa, OK 1967.
Director Danya Taymor focuses the storytelling squarely upon these characters, eschewing the usual lavish Broadway stage design to simply use a single broad setting, with various locations creatively conjured from cars, tyres, and planks of wood. Direction, choreography, and design are intricately linked, the spectacle of the whole being even greater than the sum of the parts.
Lighting and sound design work in tandem to pack a real punch, so to speak, in the frequent scenes of physical violence; knockout blows keenly and painfully felt. The fire at the church is a spectacular technical sequence, only topped by the climactic full company rumble in the pouring rain.
A feature of the performances is the perfectly natural transitions from spoken word to sung vocals. This feature is facilitated by the deftly integrated book (Adam Rapp with Justin Levine) and music (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance with Levine). Rapp and Levine have one of the great protagonists in Ponyboy, taking their lead from S.E. Hinton’s novel by having Ponyboy directly address the audience.
The musical is a very faithful adaptation of the novel, and is also based upon the 1983 movie. The struggling “greasers” and affluent “socs” (“socialites”) duke it out for urban dominance, their battles spiralling out of control, raising the stakes ever higher.
Playing music supervisor Levine’s orchestrations and arrangements, a rocking band of nine musicians, including conductor Matt Hinkley on keyboard, adds significantly to the quality and atmosphere of performance.
Brody Grant completely immerses himself in the role of Ponyboy, having the audience in his palm from the opening moments. Brent Comer gives strong support as Ponyboy’s oldest brother and guardian Darrel. At this performance, Victor Carrillo Tracey brought genuine goodness to middle Curtis brother Sodapop.
Sky Lakota-Lynch makes for a very sympathetic Johnny. Joshua Boone bristles with unfettered bravado as Dallas Winston.
Emma Pittman sweetly captures the all too canny grace of Cherry.
Packing the power that must have been experienced when audiences first watched West Side Story back in 1957, The Outsiders respects the past and confidently takes the art form even further. This is must-see musical theatre at its best, destined to create throngs of new aficionados.
The Outsiders plays at Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York. For tickets, click here.
Photos: Matthew Murphy