The mother of a U.S. soldier (Courtnee Carter) protests the Vietnam War in Bryce Hallett’s Rolling Thunder.
Rolling Thunder, a hybrid jukebox musical and Vietnam War docudrama, has, in fact, been on a roll. After opening in Brisbane in 2014, it toured Australia twice, in 2016 and 2023. Now, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, writer and onetime Sydney Morning Herald theater critic Bryce Hallett has adapted his script for an American audience, bringing this hard-rocking reckoning of the 1960s to New World Stages for its Off-Broadway premiere.
Mike (Deon’te Goodman, left) and Johnny (Drew Becker) cope with their tour of duty.
Hallett and director Kenneth Ferrone deploy three different tactics to transport the audience back in time. There are archival audio and video clips resurrecting the words of LBJ, Richard Nixon, Walter Cronkite, and Martin Luther King Jr. There is a five-member, guitar-heavy onstage band that, over the course of two hours, cranks out eighteen hits of the era. And there is a cast of six who, when not performing the vocals for those hits, assume the roles of various soldiers, girlfriends, and the like. These characters, though created by Hallett, are composites of real-life people, drawn from interviews, letters, and other research.
It is the plight of a playwright that, while an audience will happily hear the same song a hundred times, they can sour on sitting through situations they have encountered more than once. That is a danger here. Perhaps because real life is not without its stereotypes, these characters, their actions, and their fates are mostly predictable.
There is Tommy (Justin Matthew Sargent), a religious college student who decides to volunteer after spotting a Marine on campus: “He looked confident and sharp in his dress blues with the crimson stripe down the side of his trousers. I thought, ‘That’s how I want to look. I’m going to be a marine!’”
Tommy inspires his childhood friend, Johnny (Drew Becker), a Nebraska farm boy, to sign up as well, leaving Johnny’s loyal gal, Linda (Cassadee Pope), to count down the days until his return. Joining them in their platoon are Andy (Daniel Yearwood) and his friend Mike (Deon’te Goodman). Courtnee Carter, meanwhile, serves double duty as Andy’s worried mother and the forlorn Nurse Kelly.
Tommy (Justin Matthew Sargent) looks forward to becoming a marine. Photographs by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.
Basic training for the recruits goes unmentioned, with the exception of a single line from Andy (“Our training at Fort Campbell had been mindless and tough. I wasn’t cut out for it, not one bit”). The focus instead is on the soldiers as they suffer through their time around Saigon, in the heat and endless rains, questioning their choices as the casualties of war mount. Back at home, Linda stays faithful while gaining a social conscience, Tommy’s girlfriend writes him off, and Andy’s mom is proved right to be a worrier.
Hallett’s dialogue cannot help but lag behind the lyrics of greats like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Yearwood’s rendition of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is a highlight, as is Becker’s “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Indeed, the show’s most effective moments are when one song provides counterpoint to the next, without any interruptive dialogue. This happens twice. Portraying Linda in a moment of despair, Pope offers a beautiful a cappella version of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” which is immediately followed by Yearwood, as a lonely Andy making time on the streets of Saigon, singing Santana’s “Black Magic Woman.” Later, Pope and Carter perform a stirring duet of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” which transitions into the entire company taking turns with an urgent “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (The Animals).
Neither Tommy nor Johnny seem the type to break out into Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” but such is the disjointed nature of the production that when the actors become singers they may or may not be bringing their characters along for the ride. And some of the songs they sing were not necessarily written with Vietnam in mind, but, as with Wayne Carson’s “The Letter,” fit in nicely despite being out of context.
Wilson Chin’s scenic design relies heavily on Caite Hevner’s projection design to create the dangerous jungle surroundings, though the screens are too far upstage and too far apart from each other to conjure much terror. The musical arrangements and orchestrations, by Chong Lim and Sonny Paladino, generally solve the problems of bringing radio hits to the stage. There is a quiet, dark intensity to Goodman’s rendition of “Eve of Destruction” (P. F. Sloan). And when guitarists Sherrod Barnes and Aurélien Budynek combine forces in “All Along the Watchtower” (Jimi Hendrix), their screeching strings blow through the roof just as “the winds begin to howl.”
Rolling Thunder runs through September 7 at New World Stages (340 W 50th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Monday, and Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, visit rollingthunderus.com.
Book: Bryce Hallett
Direction: Kenneth Ferrone
Music Direction: Sonny Paladino
Sets: Wilson Chin
Costumes: Andrea Lauer
Lighting Design: Jake DeGroot
Sound Design: Mike Tracey
Projections: Caite Hevner
