Review: ‘The Porch on Windy Hill’ at Northlight Theatre explores family and folk music, but has a long way to go
“The Porch on Windy Hill,” the stiff and preachy new show at the Northlight Theatre, bills itself as “a new play with old music.” Frankly, I preferred the old music to the new play.
As penned by Sherry Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse and David M. Lutken, and as conceived and directed by the first of those writers and performed by the latter three, “The Porch on Windy Hill” wants to attract audiences by exploring and performing American folk and bluegrass music, a la Woody Guthrie and the like.
David M. Lutken plays Edgar, a genial, grandfatherly practitioner of such tunes and the setting is the front porch of his North Carolina home. Thereupon arrives his granddaughter Mira (Johanson) and her boyfriend Beckett (Morse), a graduate student specializing in the ethnography and history of folk music. Beckett is happy to meet Edgar, something of an old-time big name in his field. And for much of this very thin show, the trio picks up various string instruments lying around and jam together. They’re all skilled musical performers and, in particular, Johanson is an emotionally present and powerful actress who just needs better material.
But there’s an edge to the proceedings. Mira’s mom, we’re told, married a Korean student and Edgar treated the couple coldly, though he doted on Mira when she was a child. And thus Mira’s parents moved away. This has made Mira reluctant to return and deal with the many ghosts of her youth, much to the chagrin of the apologetic Edgar, who has missed his granddaughter.
There is no shortage of racial prejudice in North Carolina, as in all other states. And it’s certainly very conceivable that an Appalachian woman and her husband would suffer such treatment from her own father. But there’s not a blink of that animosity or edge in Lutken’s actual performance; he’s such a warm, gentle and lovable actor that you cannot imagine this guy treating ill of anyone, let alone his own son-in-law. It just makes no sense whatsoever.
And thus you have a show that cannot reconcile its desire to be heartfelt and welcoming but also the site of a serious racial reckoning that it does not have the complexity nor the time nor the self-awareness to stage: frankly, the situation here feels like it was crafted to fit some perception of a post-pandemic obligation without sufficiently concentrating on the need for authenticity.
In fact, the Mira character is so much defined by race as to barely be allowed to otherwise exist and it’s hard to believe she would be with Beckett, who feels buffoonish. If you want a collection of rural, hillbilly stereotypes, you sure have one here.
The whole show is stagy, awkward and so didactic as to feel more like a seminar than a night’s entertainment.
Better, moving forward, if everyone dials back the lecturing and sloganeering, focuses on how music can heal and bring people together, allows characters to live and breathe rather than push them into righteous symbols and, ideally, finds an outside eye who can speak the hard truths to very talented and experienced performers who have written their own material. There’s potential, but a long way yet to go.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “The Porch on Windy Hill: a new play with old music” (2 stars)
When: Through May 14
Where: North Shore Center for the Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $30-$89 at 847-673-6300 and northlight.org
