The Outsiders helped launch the careers of C. Thomas Howell, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane and Rob Lowe, who made his feature film debut in the 1983 coming-of-age drama directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Five decades later, the Austin-based roots-rock duo Jamestown Revival, with assistance from a couple of New York stage pros, adapted the cult movie and the S.E. Hinton novel it’s based on into a successful Broadway musical that’s still running. The show, which has been nominated for 12 Tony Awards and won four, including best musical, has landed at Fair Park Music Hall as part of a North American tour, presented by Broadway Dallas.
The plot revolves around three brothers in 1965 Tulsa whose parents recently died in a car crash. The youngest, 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis, is a member of the working class Greasers gang, who get into a series of violent disputes with the upper-crust Socs, short for Socialites. The twists include a stabbing, a suicide, a near drowning, children trapped in a church fire and Ponyboy’s obsession with a classic novel (Gone With the Wind in the book and film versions, Great Expectations in the musical).
Dallas native Corbin Drew Ross plays the middle brother, 16-year-old Sodapop Curtis.
“Key to the show’s power is the director Danya Taymor’s rivetingly sensorial approach to the storytelling, even if it sometimes comes at a cost to the story itself,” critic Jesse Green wrote in The New York Times. “If the impact of the songs is intermittent, the design and flow of The Outsiders is endlessly effective.”
Details
Through Nov. 16 at the Music Hall at Fair Park. Tickets at broadwaydallas.org.
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