This Land: The Woody Guthrie Story

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was one of the giants of 20th century popular music. A folk singer-songwriter, he wandered across Depression-era USA—from Los Angeles to the New York island—chronicling the lives and suffering of the working class Americans he met on his travels. His influence on successive generations of folk, rock and pop artists can hardly be overstated; he was also the man who helped bring Bob Dylan to prominence.

This Land: The Woody Guthrie Story charts Guthrie's life from the very moment of his birth in Okemah, Oklahoma to his death in a New York medical facility, suffering from complications due to Huntington's disease. It weaves Guthrie's greatest songs into the narrative in his life, displaying some truly exemplary musicality along the way.

Unfortunately, the unedited nature of this biographical play means that too much time is given over to Guthrie's childhood and late adolescence, with too little emphasis attached to his life's work and the most meaningful points in his life. The consequence is that much of the play can be rather boring: its pace too slow, its attention too unfocused.

This is compounded by some rather clumsy stage direction. A too often relied upon motif, involving a bed frame and wooden boards, clatters loudly and drowns out too much of the music and dialogue during each scene change. Furthermore, on several occasions, the actors leave the stage to play among the audience in a move that is both utterly unnecessary and serves only to divert one's attention from the ongoing performance onstage.

These flaws combine to dull a clearly passionate and talented cast, and undermine an otherwise enjoyable performance.