“We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do,” ran the lyrics to the 1960s hit. It’s a sentiment shared by the characters in “Fugitive Songs,” the latest offering from New Generation Theatrical.
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Written some 20 years ago by composer Chris Miller and lyricist Nathan Tysen, a team probably best known for Broadway’s short-lived “Tuck Everlasting,” “Fugitive Songs” is not a typical musical. Instead, it’s a song cycle: The six actors sing songs all themed to the idea of getting away from something — a place, a person, a state of mind.
But make no mistake, in the capable hands of director Kate Adams Kramer and her cast, there are most definitely characters present. Think of each song as a mini-play with vividly drawn personas sharing their stories. Nearly all succeed.
Music director Anthony Ransom has done fine work training the singers, as the music is difficult, with complex harmonies in the few big group numbers. The singers certainly have their work cut out from them: Not only is the music complicated, but the recorded backing tracks don’t offer them much help, they are spread out around New Gen’s theater, and on opening night had to contend with microphone malfunctions.
Perhaps all of that is why, on the whole, the solo and small group numbers registered better than the full-cast songs, which lean toward the earnest.
All six performers have a knack for finding life’s comedy — because isn’t life, even in the midst of chaos, funny? — among the pathos. Gabriella Headley scores twice with comic exasperation: First, as a young woman who’s fed up with her boyfriend, then as a woman hiking the Appalachian trail to appease another boyfriend … who has left her behind.
Hannah McGinley Lemasters also wins in the battle of the sexes, giving a country-tinged vibe to some empowering numbers in which she turns the tables on a high school flame and decides to do some spring cleaning of the physical and emotional kind.
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Raven Lawrence has a lilting soprano, and she and Ethan Hoyt share a sweet chemistry in “Wildflowers,” an ode to unexpected love. They also harmonize well together, a feat Lawrence repeats with Lemasters on a quirky song about a pair of women who long for the excitement of Patty Hearst’s life.
Russell Stephens leads a dynamic bike ride featuring the cast’s three men with the wind at his back and a vibrant voice. Joey Nelan features in that ride, and displays a lovely tenor there and elsewhere. He also sells the show’s wackiest and most darkly comic song — about a stoner who gets pulled into a robbery, delightfully conveyed by Nelan’s increasingly frantic reactions to the unknown thief’s actions.
But the show also has more serious moments, which have something profound to say about America today. Stephens admirably conveys a boy’s confusion and frustration at growing up different with unreliable role models. And most penetrating of all, Hoyt leads “Subway Song,” which unnervingly sums up the alienation of those trapped in dead-end towns and dead-end jobs — and desperate for escape.
“Fugitive Songs” has flown somewhat under the radar all these years; this is a wonderful three-day-only opportunity to hear these captivating songs, presented with flair.
‘Fugitive Songs’
• Length: 1:50, including intermission
• Where: New Generation Theatrical Studio at Orlando Fashion Square, 3201 E. Colonial Drive in Orlando
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• When: 8 p.m. Sept. 20, 8 p.m. Sept. 21
• Cost: $27
• Info: newgentheatrical.org