Country music and drama harmonise in a surprisingly sad story
It’s often said that country music is just pickup trucks and pain, and Midnight in Nashville – Lee Papa’s touchingly beautiful new ‘play with music’, here making its London debut – delivers plenty of pain. Marcy Aurora (Biz Lyon), country music star and killer, has just finished serving a twenty-year stretch for manslaughter, and she’s got an album to make! Taking the audience into the recording studio over a single evening, Aurora reckons with the changes her voice has undergone in a beautiful metaphor for her life and tribulations. Three original songs, alongside some old favourites, harmonise with sharply-written dialogue to deliver a surprisingly touching tale of justice, and perhaps forgiveness.
The warm banter between Aurora and audio technician Colleen (Catherine Mieses) is quietly compelling. Between recordings, Aurora riffs on her days performing in the most important studios – “I want this bass lower, it’s making my tits vibrate” – and tells more recent stories from her time behind bars. Singing an old Scottish song, she impersonates male and female country singers in a vocal display as funny as it is skilled. This experimentation initially expresses Aurora’s frustration at being unable to find her sound, but also provides the revelation that helps her through it.
Midnight in Nashville’s great promise is of a narrative and soundtrack resonating together to produce an experience greater than the sum of its parts. Lee Papa’s writing is excellent, particularly when Aurora explains her manslaughter conviction with great emotional power. Several other moments deliver real drama – a Zoom interviewer is less interested in Aurora’s music than the sordid details of her crime; Aurora reveals her first actions upon release – and a compelling script sketches a fully-realised, empathetic character. The music is surprisingly piano-led, and perhaps wallows a bit too much in sadness. It also feels quite old-fashioned, lacking the guitar riffs and dynamism of modern country music. Fitting, perhaps, for a character incarcerated over the last 20 years, but a less exciting sonic palette.
By contrast, scene transitions use music packing a punch, all deep strumming and propulsive beats – one of many production touches enhancing Midnight in Nashville’s atmosphere. The recording studio is wonderfully immersive, with Aurora on one side of the room and Colleen on the other, the audience placed between them. When Aurora explains her crime, the story begins as a documentary interview playing on a phone, before snapping into a powerful, emotional monologue at the front of the stage.
Leaving The Glitch’s small basement theatre, it’s Midnight in Nashville’s surprisingly emotional story and music that stick with you. Whilst it would be good to see a fuller range of what country music has to offer, it’s undeniable that Aurora’s heartbreaking story marries well with the solemnity of her music. It’s a poignant, affecting story made better by its musical elements. And not a pickup truck in sight.
Midnight in Nashville plays every day at 7pm at The Glitch until 7th September. Tickets here.