Editor’s note: “Movin’ Out returns to the Buell Theatre June 13-18. Here is John Moore’s review from the production that first toured Denver in 2004. It was published May 28, 2004.
Billy Joel didn’t start the fire, but his blue-collar rock ballet “Movin’ Out” has certainly set the Buell Theatre ablaze.
And until this dazzling, groundbreaking gem leaves town, no one likely will be calling the fire department. The only calls for water will be to cool soaring body temperatures – both on stage and in the audience.
This is four-star theater in every way: Four-star dancing from the 16 phenomenal young rebels carrying out Twyla Tharp’s ongoing dance revolution. Four-star music from a rip-roaring, 10-piece rock band fronted by Darren Holden. And most audaciously, four-star storytelling that effortlessly communicates an epic tale of young love, war, death and resilience – with no dialogue.
On paper, setting 29 Joel compositions to dance seems incongruous at best, snickeringly foolhardy at worst. But what might appear to be anachronistic is, in fact, the healthiest kind of codependence.
Joel’s songs have given Tharp a euphoric forum to expose modern dance in an accessible and embraceable way to that part of the populace that wouldn’t be caught dead at a ballet, which means about 90 percent of everyone under 60. And Tharp’s crystalline
direction not only elucidates the nuance, humor and heartbreak of Joel’s lyrics but brazenly demands the immediate reconsideration of his place in songwriting history.
Without even tapping into “Piano Man” or “New York State of Mind” (at least until the encore), Tharp communicates the giddy loves and devastating losses shared by five Long Island schoolkids whose lives are interrupted by the Vietnam War. But as joyously as one might expect the tone-setting “It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me,” “The Longest Time” and “Uptown Girl” to play out (and they do), lesser-known nuggets “Summer, Highland Falls,” “Big Man on Mulberry Street” and “James,” when placed in a theatrical context, reveal Joel’s lyrics to be, at times, in league with even Bruce Springsteen’s.
“The Stranger” is turned into a gut-wrenching funeral song featuring widow Judy (Julieta Gros); “Goodnight Saigon” becomes the harrowing, recurring nightmare of an army vet trying futilely to escape his past. Both are unabashed tearjerkers because through dance, you have come to know these characters with more complexity
than a 100-page script might communicate.
When I first saw “Movin’ Out” on Broadway last year, it took 30 minutes to stop rolling my eyes before I could focus on the spellbinding, sweaty display of dance before me. At Tuesday’s opening of the national tour in Denver, I was with the performance
from the first, pulsating beat to the last.
On Broadway, it’s eerie how much the Piano Man (Michael Cavanaugh) sounds like Joel. Holden doesn’t try to sound at all like Joel, but he manages to sound better anyway.
The dancers, clad in jeans, muscle shirts and skimpy dresses, seamlessly intermingle ballet with jazz, modern and even urban steps, though “steps” seems a wholly inadequate term. More like leaps, aerials, rolls, flips and somersaults. Characters go through boot camp and dodge bullets as expressively through dance as lovers are (more traditionally) vaulted into the air.
And they do all this wearing not ballet slippers but high heels, tennis shoes and combat boots.
The demands are so severe on the five primary dancers and Holden that they will alternate each performance with a second company of leads. But there was more chemistry on stage Tuesday than in a high-school lab, with the spectacular, sexy trio of Laurie Kanyok (Brenda), Corbin Popp (Anthony) and Ron Todorowski (Eddie) hurtling
so ferociously into the hearts of a rapt audience that by evening’s end, fans were reduced to rock-concert idolatry, complete with hooting, hollering and flickering lighters demanding the return of the cast and band.
Kanyok is an iconic blond beauty who looks better than Meg Ryan at her best. Her dancing is so crisp and bold that without uttering a line she revealed the terrific actress who lies within (especially as an aimless, drugged hippie in “We Didn’t Start the Fire”).
Popp, a buff blond jock who looks better suited for a football field than a ballet, had women in the house shrieking, and Todorowski was a one-man flipping machine.
After Tuesday’s opening, I asked a Denver choreographer if there was a dance term to describe the aerials Todorowski was executing.
His response: “Yeah: ‘Amazing.”‘
There may not be a better word to describe the most surprising and invigorating evening of theater to hit Denver in years.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
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**** “Movin’ Out”
ROCK CONCERT/ DANCE
Buell Theatre, 14th and Curtis streets
Directed by Twyla Tharp, music by Billy Joel
1 hour, 55 minutes
8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through June 18
$25-$60
303-893-4100 or www.denvercenter.org
