Part rock concert, part documentary, this exhilarating and moving show tells the heartfelt stories of young soldiers caught in the abyss of the Vietnam War and the galvanizing protest movement that sought to end it.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War with the fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975, when NVA tanks rolled through the gates of the Presidential Palace.
Rolling Thunder brings together legendary songs of the period of the ‘60s and ‘70s, raw and potent storytelling inspired by Vietnam veterans and their families. The draft, combat, civil rights movement, and homecoming are evocatively reawakened in this intimate and epic work. At heart, it’s a deeply moving love story of courage, longing, loss, and hope.
Rolling Thunder's nostalgia is rooted in the effective wail for justice, solidarity, and care that the music (like Edwin Starr’s legendary ‘War’ or Barry McGuire's ‘Eve of Destruction’) articulates in a way the script does not. The letters only offer a thin psychology of the characters, bland first-person accounts of the paranoia and brutality of war, and vaguely condescending descriptions of Saigon’s inhabitants, who are as much, if not more so, victims of Western warmongering as the soldiers.
Dramatically, the show feels comparatively undernourished as we’re introduced to soldiers Johnny (Drew Becker), Thomas (Justin Matthew Sargent), Andy (Daniel Yearwood) and Mike (Deon’te Goodman, who also plays several other roles). The characters, who speak via monologues and readings from letters, are defined in the thinnest of terms.
| 2025 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
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