Cashing In on a Legend

Did you ever think the rebel angel of country music would make it to Broadway? Believe it or not, the day has come: "Ring of Fire," a show dedicated to the work of the legendary singer Johnny Cash, opens this week. It consists of 38 songs, 14 performers and more smiles than Cash exhibited over his entire lifetime. Created by Tony winner Richard Maltby Jr. (who did "Ain't Misbehavin' " and "Fosse"), the show spans Cash's career, from 1957's "Country Boy" to 2002's "The Man Comes Around." "Ring of Fire" is the latest in a series of mostly doomed efforts to pull off a successful jukebox musical. The Abba-based "Mamma Mia!" is still making money, but the songs were originally contrived with glittering synchronized dance moves in mind. Musicals based on the material of more substantial and influential artists--Elvis, the Beach Boys, John Lennon--have failed big time. So why even try bringing the Man in Black to the Great White Way?

Probably because Cash was a great storyteller whose amazing body of work was just too good to pass up. (After all, didn't Hollywood get away with "Walk the Line"?) "Ring of Fire" had Cash's own blessing--he gave Maltby the stage rights to his material just before he died in 2003. But the show, which doesn't follow a single story line but presents each song in a separate vignette, has one major problem: the performers aren't Johnny Cash. They're clean-cut, they sing in tune and they project most numbers with "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" zeal. But when Cash sings "Ring of Fire," it's spooky, dark, forbidden. When a pair of generic turtledoves hold hands and croon "Love is a burning thing/And it makes a fiery ring" to one another against a backdrop of sunset and clouds, it has the weight of an Allegra commercial. The classic hangover song "Sunday Morning, Coming Down" just isn't as convincing when sung by a hearty blond guy who looks and sounds as if he's had a full night's sleep under clean sheets. And bad-boy numbers like "Folsom Prison Blues," where the singer "shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"? Let's not even go there.

The set, at least, is appropriately low key: just two screens projecting familiar country-music scenes--The Farmhouse, The Roadhouse, The Jailhouse. But the simplicity is shattered by the first act's overabundance of fiddle, honky-tonk piano, hiked skirts and pumped-up two-steppin' that recalls the days of "Hee Haw." The second half is a little less hammy. Its best number--a somber chain gang singing "Going to Memphis" to the rhythmic clanking of chains--morphs into the twisted "Delia's Gone" ("If I hadn't have shot poor Delia, I'd have had her for my wife"), one of the few songs the show truly nails, thanks to the dry, sardonic delivery of the underused David Lutken. But for the closer, "Hey Porter," the cast actually forms a human train and pretends to roll down the track. "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine," Cash sang in the song that made him famous. "Ring of Fire" suggests that he should have kept a closer watch on his legacy.