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fire on
the mountain
By SUSAN L. RIFE
susan.rife@heraldtribune.com
Men in twill work pants, or overalls and dusty boots, and women in shapeless cotton dresses gather on a rustic front porch.
The men wipe coal dust from their faces, pick up musical instruments -- a guitar, a banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin -- and commence making a joyful noise to the Lord.
It's the sole bright spot in the long workweek of the Appalachian coal miner, whose life, and sometimes untimely and horrible death, is movingly chronicled in "Fire on the Mountain."
It's not quite right to call "Fire on the Mountain" a musical. It certainly has plenty of music from the mountain, bluegrass and blues traditions and even a bit of dancing. But by and large, "Fire" is a simultaneously mournful and elegiac ode to a dangerous and disappearing way of life.
Playwrights Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman interviewed miners and their families in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia for both the text and the songs in the show.
Myler directs a stellar cast of both musicians and actors for the production, which is perfectly suited to the small stage and intimate space of the Keating Theatre at FST.
Audiences are quickly drawn into the lives of the miners and their families (characters are identified only as "Daughter," "Mama," "Miner," and by the instruments they play), aided by a backdrop of dramatic black-and-white photographs projected onto two white panels at the back of the set.
The show is anchored musically by guitarist/singer Jason Edwards, who brings a rich baritone voice and convincing guitar work to the production. He's ably assisted by fiddle player Mark Baczynski, mandolinist Jim Price and dobro and banjo player Brian Gunter.
Her "Tin of Morphine," referring to what miners carry to work "just in case," is heart-rending, as is Kim Crow's description of what seems inevitable in mining families: the death of a husband in a mining accident.
Mike Regan brings a sense of weariness to the central role of the Miner, who says of the mine workers' ethnic origins: "Eye-talians, Slavs, Negroes," all working together in the mine.
Rob Barnes' woe-filled bluesman's voice is put to excellent use throughout the show.
There's a bit of a story cycle to the production. In an early scene, Austin Ashbaugh as Boy (alternating with Thatcher Svekis) recounts starting work in the mines at the age of 8. By the end of the show, the Miner is exhorting a future generation to find work outside the mines.
"Fire on the Mountain" has the feel of a group of friends and family gathered on a front porch on a Sunday afternoon, pickin' and singin.' But despite the back-and-forth banter between these miners and their families, they'll touch a deep spot in the soul.
