Rock and Roll Man: The Alan Freed Story is, you’ve guessed it, one more musical about rock’s roots, yet it’s a prospect of interest. Sure, the tale of so-called “race music”’s transformation through rhythm and blues into backbeating rhythms that would set the world dancing has been often told, from the perspectives of the south (Memphis) and Detroit (Motown), as well as tangentially in greatest-hits bios from Beautiful and Jersey Boys to Leader of the Pack and Million Dollar Quartet. But the big story of early rock’s eastward journey, from Cleveland to the Big Apple, hinges on DJ/concert promoter Freed (1921-1965), identified by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as “the boundary-smashing, trend-setting evangelist” who gave the music its name. A famously enigmatic, driven figure, he’s played at Berkshire Theatre Group by Alan Campbell, who scored years ago as the equally enigmatic, driven Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard.
It should be a great fit, but let’s start with the good news on the musical front, which is what most will be coming for anyway. The playlist is extensive and smartly handled. I counted 33 solid gold 50’s hits, alongside 14 original songs and reprises by Gary Kupper. (It’s a smart tactical move to have Freed and friends only sing new stuff, much of it pleasant if forgettable.) Kupper’s charts of the vintage classics, music directed by Dave Keyes, owe a lot to the old recordings and so they should, with director Randal Myler wisely assigning the heavy lifting to a superb quartet (there were so many back in that day) with moves and vocal blends like buttah. I appreciated that Early Clover, A.J. Davis, Jerome Jackson, and Dr. Eric B. Turner are all middle-aged plus, their years contributing to their utter authenticity. The quartet’s every appearance is a delight.
Ah, but the book. It’s credited to Kupper, Larry Marshak (a former Rock magazine editor), and Rose Caiola, and does feel like the product of a committee, one in which the members with the most edgy or honest ideas consistently got outvoted. Every line of dialogue is a showbiz cliché. A dream “court of public opinion” in which Freed is to be judged serves as a framing device, though for long stretches it’s left behind and why not, as the judgment is clear from the get-go. This Freed is simply a charmer, a lovable Joe in the Jimmy Stewart vein, and the script does cartwheels to equivocate as to whether he was guilty of payola, or grabbed undue songwriting credit, or abused substances. Campbell is actor enough to play any Freed handed to him, and it’s frustrating that the script is as respectful of the character’s feelings as if he were planning to attend. (Heartfelt program thanks to the Freed family may indicate involvement unconducive to a warts-and-all portrayal.)
Rock and roll was transgressive, something you pick up in the crazy violence of Richard Crandle’s vogueing as Little Richard, or James Scheider’s recreation of Jerry Lee Lewis’s splits-on-the-keyboard approach to the 88’s. But there’s nothing angry or threatening, much less evangelistic, in this Freed, although in numerous photos of him you can clock the haunted, baggy eyes, the cigarettes, the tension. What drove him? What destroyed him, at age 43 no less? Campbell, discreetly nipping from a hip flask, couldn’t look healthier. For that matter, the ensemble is choreographed by Brian Reeder ingeniously, but almost completely into clean-cut niceness. To what could the Establishment have objected? What on earth raised the dyspepsia of J. Edgar Hoover (George Wendt, than whom no one is more dyspeptic)? Look not here for any sense of the danger Alan Freed was seen as midwifing into the world, let alone whether he was aware of it or enjoyed it.
But if nothing like the real Freed is remotely present, some will argue that his legacy is enough, and that what a person does is more important than who that person is. If so then yes, spectators may depart satisfied at merely seeing this debonair fellow keep introducing great tunes. (That’s probably the way audiences at the time perceived Freed anyway.) But I’m not sure it’s a reliable recipe for a robust stage success to make the main character so bland and, in the end, kind of dull. Our reward for spending so much time with the Rock and Roll Man is meager. The rock and roll is fine. It’s the man who’s missing.
Rock and Roll Man: The Alan Freed Story opened July 6, 2019, at the Colonial Theatre (Pittsfield, MA) and runs through July 21. Tickets and information: berkshiretheatregroup.org
