No, it wasn't art and it didn't quite work and I think the material is simply inappropriate to musicalize. That said, there were enough exciting moments in "Rocka My Soul", which I saw Saturday night, to justify going.
And, of course, there's Abigail, my little love, who starred as child murderer Susan Smith.
That's right. This musical takes the appalling and truly sickening real story of Smith who, at the age of 23 and separated from her husband, strapped her three year old into his seatbelt, the baby into the car seat, then drove them into a lake in South Carolina. It's a horror.
Seems her new boyfriend didn't want a ready-made family.
So, someone decided this would make a great musical. And the conceit wasn't bad. The murders incited terrible race rage because Smith, before confessing, invented a mysterious black man who she claimed carjacked her then drove off with her children. The musical focuses on the social injustice of profiling and uses well-known gospel numbers to tell the story from the community point of view. The playwright spins his own story of false incarceration and execution, which does take it out of the realm of docudrama (in real life the truth emerged within days).
I just think it's something we all remember too well with too much horror and this is maybe one of those things I think it inappropriate to musicalize.
That said, ABIGAIL WAS FANTASTIC. What a gifted, sensitive, resourceful, charming actress. I was immensely proud of her and glad her parents, up from Tennessee, could see her in something where she was not only the lead, but great.
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