Review: WOODY GUTHRIE'S AMERICAN SONG at Theater Alliance

On the park lawn on a summer’s night you can hear them faintly approaching: Nine singers and musicians, some with protest signs, singing “All You Fascists Bound to Lose,” gaining volume as they approach. That it’s occasionally punctuated by the horn of a yacht is due to the location: Waterfront Park, quite near the Wharf, where Theater Alliance has set up a glorious, ragtag stage to match the spirit of the ever-timely anthems in their new revue “Woody Guthrie’s American Song.”

As the company’s permanent stage is being built nearby, the Alliance has found a splendid spot to celebrate the songs and life of the American troubadour. Just as Guthrie created songs by listening to the voices of the everyman in hard times, each cast member in turn becomes Guthrie in reciting a line or chapter from his life story amid a song cycle that follows a similarly autobiographical journey, from birth in the “Oklahoma Hills” to some “Hard Travelin’” in the Depression era.

Wearing earth-toned clothes of the era, the spirited young cast moved from dusty plains to crowded boxcars to Bowery dives and union halls, from work camps at dam projects to blazing fields, all suggested by the versatile set by Jonathan Dahm Robertson. Their largely acoustic  instruments reflect the era as well, though the back of the guitar scrawled with the famous Guthrie motto “This Machine Kills Fascists” on the front looked pretty shiny on its back, and an electric keyboard hid behind the bones of what was meant to look like an old upright piano.

While at first the cacophony of autobiographical lines seemed hard to untangle one on top another, soon enough the agreeable and swift  moving format shifts through songs familiar ("Pastures of Plenty") and less so ("Ludlow Massacre"). 

The cast worked well as an ensemble. Ethan J. Miller seemed at first to be the voice of Guthrie, while strumming a guitar, but it soon moved to others. Annie Graninger had a standout voice in harmonies and out front; Jordan Lean Embrack was strong in a New York segment, handling “Hard Ain’t It Hard.” Ixchel captivated with a full reading of “Deportee (Plane Wreck in Los Gatos),” that came with the context that inspired the song — the news report that left out the names of the 28 dead migrant farm workers in a plane crash (correcting that lapse, their names were duly recited at the song's end).

Faith Wong’s fiddle was a guiding light on many of the songs; Savina Barini added occasional dance movement in addition to her vocals. Yusef Chisholm, a tenth person on stage, wasn’t part of the ensemble but was sole backing musician, playing standup bass for most of the tunes.

Director Tim Seib kept things flowing, sometimes plopping actors on the grass to watch others perform as if to make them part of the people once more..  

First performed at a New Hampshire stage festival in 1988, the revue has been trimmed from its original two hour length.This may account for some tonal jolts as when a moving set of enduring Guthrie songs about the despairing lives of migrant workers suddenly jumps to the  unearned uplift of “Better World-A-Comin’” before the inevitable closer, “This Land is Your Land,” with every one of the overlooked verses. 

First conceived by Peter Glazer soon after the nation’s Bicentennial, and performed hundreds of times since, “Woody Guthrie’s American Song” is the perfect musical for the nation’s semiquincentennial year, reflecting the country’s hopes as it enumerates its struggles. Songs that looked clear-eyed at the depths of the Depression nearly a century ago feel eerily timely for 2026 as well, in terms of treatment of the poor, the working class and the immigrant. That makes its indelible hope and unerring humor just as necessary today.

And as a reflection of where we’ve been and where we strive to go, it’s much better than anything that came from behind all those fences at that failed corporate state fair a little over a mile away last month at the National Mall and ought to be more enduring. 

Running time: About 90 minutes, with no intermission. 

Photo credit: Company of “Woody Guthrie’s American Song.” Photo provided by Theater Alliance 

“Woody Guthrie’s American Song” is presented by Theater Alliance through August 29 outdoors at Waterfront Park at The Wharf, 515 Water St. SW, Washington, D.C. Bring a blanket or low-backed lawn chair to sit on. All tickets are name your own price. Information: 202-241-2539 or online.

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