Humming The Battles

By Richard Zoglin

A nation divided. Two irreconcilable causes. Fanatical partisans on both sides. The Civil War? No, it's the battle over Frank Wildhorn. The prolific composer who gave us Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel is routinely dismissed as an easy-listening schlockmeister by the discerning critics. Audiences, however, keep flocking to his shows.

With The Civil War, his latest Broadway offering, Wildhorn makes a bold effort to bind up the nation's wounds. This time, he has tackled a suitably lofty subject, aimed at satisfying snobs and middlebrows alike. The good news is that The Civil War avoids the pulpy melodramatics that bogged down his other shows. The bad news is that there are few dramatics of any kind--just a string of emblematic scenes-in-song, a kind of musicalized slide show of America's great conflict. Two brothers go off to fight on opposing sides. A wife pines for her soldier husband. Former slaves raise the roof to celebrate freedom. The lyrics cover all the predictable bases ("Sometimes it's too much to bear/ The dead and dying everywhere"). Wildhorn and his collaborators--director Jerry Zaks; co-writers Gregory Boyd and Jack Murphy--have smoothly packaged a lot of material (more of which can be heard on the two-CD concept album). But what they offer makes for thin gruel, dramatically and historically.

Musically, though, the show can't be dismissed. Best known for his overripe pop anthems, Wildhorn may be the Celine Dion of Broadway composers, but here he shows more interesting colors. Missing You, sung by a Union wife (Irene Molloy) to her absent husband, has a plainspoken country ache. Oh! Be Joyful! is a spirited mock-gospel number in which some bored soldiers praise their liquor. And if the big soul-gospel songs like River Jordan seem a tad generic, they are rousing nonetheless. When the cast of fine, if overmiked, singers cuts loose in numbers like these, The Civil War can soar.

--By Richard Zoglin