GRAND RAPIDS, MI – “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County” bears much pedigree. The unusual stage production boasts songs by John Mellencamp, musical direction by T-Bone Burnett and a libretto by Stephen King.
Yet sometimes, a supergroup never becomes something more than the sum of its parts. Such is the fate of “Ghost Brothers,” a hybrid stage drama and rock musical telling the tragic story of the wildly dysfunctional McCandless family. The focus is on brothers Drake (Joe Tippett) and Frank (Lucas Kavner), the former a rock musician, and the latter, a writer. It’s an unfortunate that the characters, intentionally or not, are analogs for King and Mellencamp, because they never get along, symbolic of the production’s fundamental problem.
Director Susan Booth has a lot of different elements to juggle. It’s staged like an old-timey radio play. The entire 15-person cast and four-piece rock band are always present on stage, forming a semi-circle around a faux-microphone. Performers, wearing microphone headsets, stepped to center stage for their scenes. Two narrators – the guitar-plucking “Zydeco Cowboy” (Jesse Lenat) and Satan, a tattooed greaser known as The Shape (Jake La Botz) - are employed to smooth transitions from song to story and back. The narrative jumps between 1967 and 2007, and features a large number of characters.
It’s a large, unwieldy mechanism to tell a basic, unadorned story. Actor Bruce Greenwood, a veteran of film and television, plays Joe McCandless, Frank and Drake’s father. He’s the younger brother of Jack (Peter Albrink) and Andy (Travis Smith). Forty years ago, Jack and Andy’s feud, primarily over their mutual love interest Jenna (Kate Ferber), resulted in their deaths. The ghosts of the two men and their shared mistress, alongside a dead bartender (Eric Moore), haunt the McCandless family cabin where Joe’s warring offspring have assembled, along with their mutual love interest Anna (Kylie Brown) and alcoholic mother (Emily Skinner).
Mellencamp’s songs are strong, and give the audience welcome relief from the characters’ simplistic bickering. The cast features many big, bold singing voices game for the songwriter’s impassioned slice-of-life lyrics. Brown’s performance of “That’s Who I Am,” a rootsy shuffle, was especially strong, and Moore’s soulful bellow led the ensemble performance of first-act closer “Tear This Cabin Down.” It’s ironic that their characters are thin stereotypes – she’s the two-timing, troublemaking hussy, and he’s that old chestnut of many a weary story, the Wise Old Black Man.
Even when the musical numbers - performed by Mellencamp’s band, led by guitarist and musical director Andy York – were excellent, they sometimes left actors standing awkwardly for several minutes, almost frozen in place. Greenwood’s character is a depressed man with a secret he shares with his family in a moment of great grief, and the scene is overwrought, but punctuated with the rousing number “And Your Days Are Gone.” The story’s conclusion features nonsensical twists, which are unconvincing either as emotional drama or black comedy.
Yet the entirety of “Ghost Brothers” is reasonably entertaining, its broad humor hitting as often as it missed, and the cast was spirited. (Grand Rapids-born actor Joe Jung was strong in a small role, a carnival-barker type who hosts a shooting contest in one of the 1967 flashback scenes.) The soundtrack is substantial where the story and dialogue are on-the-nose and lacking any real subtext.