A new docudrama regarding a mine disaster in 2010, Coal Country is performed by a fine company of actors and is beautifully staged at the Public Theater, where its world premiere opened on Tuesday.
For all of its excellence as a production, however, the story of Coal Country is so permeated with sorrow and injustice that despair tends to be the show’s major take-away feeling.
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen have crafted their text from first-hand accounts by survivors and family members whose loved ones perished in the accident that happened in a West Virginia coal mine.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The audience is told at the top of the show that 29 men lost their lives in the disaster, so the dramatic tension that develops is not one of suspense so much as a fated inevitability as the day of the accident eventually dawns.
Framed by a trial prosecuting the mining company’s CEO, the 90-minute text is rendered by an eight-actor company. They variously note how the livelihood of numerous families was bound to the mine for several generations. They detail how the men travel three miles below ground to dig out the best vein of coal. The miners remark that in recent years the introduction of non-union workers and a decline in safety standards has made their tough job even more dangerous.
Then the audience hears about the explosion in the mine. Afterwards the sharp “Where’s my brother? Where’s my son? Where’s my husband?” sort of anguish during the first day congeals into sadness as the missing miners later are found dead. In one especially painful passage, a woman describes seeing her brother’s mangled corpse.
These people report that the company’s actions in the aftermath were suspect. At the trial, due to a legal maneuver, the survivors were not even permitted to make victim impact statements.
Yet another true life instance about citizens getting screwed by corporate America, Coal Country deals out a sad story that dies away on a desolate note.
Fortunately, this melancholy docudrama is enlivened through its smart staging by Jessica Blank in the Public’s semi-circular Anspacher space. Set designer Richard Hoover provides apt environs of weathered planks over which looms a heavy wooden beam and dozens of lightbulbs that dangle down from wires. A mist that suggests coal dust suffuses David Lander’s sooty and shadowy lighting design.
Such a non-specific but thoroughly atmospheric setting permits easy comings and goings by the ensemble, who are effectively dressed for their rural working class characters by Jessica Jahn. Spoken in varying regional accents, the ensemble’s solid performances are direct and mostly low-keyed in emotion to provide a sense of everyday authenticity to these testimonies.
More than anything, the presence of singer-songwriter Steve Earle, a three-time Grammy winner, lends luster to the plainspoken play. With his long, grey-white beard, soulful manner, and husky vocals, Earle looks every inch a backwoods balladeer as he strums the guitar and sings songs like “John Henry” and solidarity anthems such as his own “Union, God & Country.”
Interspersed throughout the narrative, these plaintive songs provide a sense of timelessness to a sorrowful tale that seems as familiar and old as the hills that yield up the coal.
Coal Country opened March 3, 2020, at the Public Theater and runs through April 5. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
