Review: A BEAUTIFUL BLUE MORNING SKY at The Keegan Theatre

Besides the massive geopolitics of it all, the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 also jolted individual emotions , almost to a person. We dealt as a nation with loss, felt empathy, a degree of hopelessness and a welling of national pride and determination as a way to endure and persevere.

And when there are such strong emotions, songwriters are drawn to tap into those feelings to further express, resonate and capture such profound moments. That the events of 9/11 could be turned into a musical sounds at first ludicrous. But framed a certain way — such as the welcoming of a corner of Canada for thousands of displaced air travelers in the decade-old “Come From Away” — can make audiences cheer. 

For musical works that focus more directly on the horrors of ground zero, it’s a much touchier proposal. 

Surely it’s an ambitious one. Duane Richards II, who conceived of “A Beautiful Blue Morning Sky,” which had its world premiere at the Keegan Theatre on the 25th anniversary weekend of 9/11, calls his piece a song cycle, “written to be an emotional re-telling of the day.” Director Autumn Tustin prefaced the premiere performance with something that almost sounded like an apology. She said the cast of eight, backed by four musicians, only had nine hours in putting it all together. “Keep that in mind,” she said.

The staged concert, playing just three performances, may have been workshopping. But looked very much like a musical that premiered on the other side of the country the same weekend, with a very similar name, “Bright Blue Sky — The 9-11 Musical” in Orange County, Calif. At the Keegan, the troupe largely carried folders to refer to the score and libretto, but they moved on stage, sometimes with props, as if signaling a musical. 

Taking off from the title, it began just as you might imagine, with lots of individuals dashing off to work, or getting the kids ready to school, and indeed noting the hue of the bright sky on that fateful day, all to the jaunty busy-in-the-city score, under the musical direction of Jake Null. (One conceit that’s built over a quarter century is that everybody heard about it from Bryant Gumbel on the “Today “ show, so we hear some of that familiar audio). . 

Then the characters, whose individual stories have already been entwined in building counterpoint all start reacting the same way, about this seeming terrible accident — it must have been a private plane hitting the building. They go on this way until the second plane immediately shows the situation to be far more grave.

A mother’s urge is to rush to her kids and hug them. Another wonders whether they’re better off in school not knowing. Everyone everywhere is trying to call a loved one, to get through on shaky cell lines. The overlapping voices (a sound mixer’s nightmare) take pause when Jasmine Richardson Rushin has a solo, as a woman determined to wash her floor despite all the things going on around her, touching on a real emotion at the time, trying to get through life without dwelling on the doom and worry.

Maybe because she’s solo and no more voices overlap, or maybe because she doesn’t have her song book in front of her — she’s learned the song — or maybe because the momentum slows to allow the impact of the moment, but it’s one of the first times the work starts to deliver.

When the cast begins to sing “They fell,” it’s not immediately clear whether they’re referring to the towers or to the people jumping. But the horror happens largely off stage, or on unseen TV screens and we’re getting reactions. At one point, a pastor (Ricky Drummond) begins to question his faith. But others are encouraged by the spirit of a city rising to help.

The individual stories pause for a more sustained portrait of one family, in which a first responder goes off to help, but a family is left behind when she never returns. At this point, a young girl, the show’s secret weapon, who is otherwise not even identified, sings about her lost mother, who revisits her husband in spirit, tells him to carry on, or even get a dog; that she’ll be with him in spirit forever more.

And at the end, the husband (the author Richards himself) sings that through it all, when she thinks of her, he’ll smile. Which seems a pretty jarring, unearned way to try to turn around a horrible situation so the piece can end on a positive note. 

It ends pretty early too. Listed at 70 minutes, it’s more like 50, with the rest of the time filled out by a personal story by a theater board member who lived near ground zero, and a spokesman for a nonprofit that will benefit from the weekend’s performance, the Northern Virginia Family Services, responsible for managing a long-term response for 9/11 Pentagon survivors. 

Such an abrupt end may be the nature of a workshop performance as it gradually evolves. The good news is that there are are certainly several moments when “A Beautiful Blue Morning Sky” is really on to something and it makes an impact. That’s due in no small part to the show’s strongest voices, that include Hannah Verdi, Ingrid Bork and Emily Levey.

With some work and further development (even a layer of theatrical smoke might be a reminder of the lingering horror), this “Beautiful Blue Morning Sky” can really shine. 

Running time: About 50 minutes, with additional speeches. No intermission. 

“A Beautiful Blue Morning Sky” will have its final performance Sept. 13 at 2 p.m. at The Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW. Tickets online. 

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