The Outsiders, the musical based on S.E. Hinton‘s classic novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s equally classic film, has just opened at San Diego’s Civic Theatre, and I can’t say enough good things about it.
With a book by Tony Award nominee Adam Rapp and Tony Award winner Justin Levine, the show premiered up the road at La Jolla Playhouse in 2023 before moving to Broadway and picking up four Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical for Danya Taymor, who also directs the tour.
The show premiered up the road at La Jolla Playhouse in 2023 before moving to Broadway and picking up four Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical for Danya Taymor, who also directs the tour.
It’s 1967 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Ponyboy Curtis (Christian Arredondo) and his best friend, Johnny Cade (Bonale Fambrini), are Greasers. They’re the working-class kids in a town where the wealthier Socs (short for Socials) are always looking for a reason to pick a fight. Ponyboy already has enough going on at home since his parents died in a car crash. His oldest brother, Darrel (Travis Roy Rogers), has been raising him and his brother Sodapop (Brendan Dallaire) and the three of them are just trying to get by and keep what’s left of their family together. The other Greasers, including Dallas Winston (Anthony Garcia) and Two-Bit (Jaydon Nget), are family, too, especially for Johnny, whose parents are usually too busy screaming at each other to pay much attention to him.
One night at the drive-in, Ponyboy and Johnny meet Cherry Valance (Emma Hearn), a Soc who hits it off with both of them. That doesn’t sit well with her boyfriend, Bob. Later, he and some other Socs corner the two boys and hold Ponyboy underwater, trying to drown him. Johnny jumps in to save his friend and stabs Bob in the process, killing him. With Dallas’s help, the boys hightail it out of Tulsa and go into hiding.
Ponyboy is a dreamer and an accidental rebel, and Arredondo nails both sides of him. Fambrini is just as good as Johnny, a kid who spends so much of his life trying to stay out of trouble and then has about a second to decide how far he’ll go to save his best friend.
Rogers does a wonderful job showing how much Darrel loves his brothers and how much he resents having to raise them. You can feel both things at once, especially when he’s dealing with Ponyboy. Garcia’s Dallas is almost Darrel’s opposite. Darrel’s the guy telling Ponyboy to come home. Dallas is the guy who knows where to send him when he has to run. Garcia gets plenty of chances to chew the scenery, and somehow it never feels over the top.
Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Levine earned a Tony nomination for their music and lyrics, and the songs flow so naturally out of the story. They also give Ponyboy the best number in the show, “Great Expectations.” It gets right to what makes him so easy to root for, imagining his life beyond the one he’s living, even if he has no idea how to get there.
I really enjoyed the show when I first saw it at the Playhouse. The performances were great, and so were the songs, but a couple of the staging choices threw me. When Ponyboy and Johnny leave Tulsa, for instance, the production put them in what looked like a cage suspended above the stage. Honestly, it was weird. In the tour, their hideout feels like the kind of dingy room two kids on the run would actually hole up in. I don’t know whether that changed on Broadway or for the tour, but it fits the set and the story so much better.
The bigger issue for me was a major accident involving one of the characters. I’ll leave the details out, but the way it played offstage at the Playhouse, I left the theater feeling like I’d missed something. This time, I felt the weight of what happened. It made a world of difference.
The fight scene between the Greasers and the Socs is fantastic. The rain comes pouring down as the two groups go at each other, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. But what I like most about Taymor’s direction is how much room she gives the quieter moments, too. I kept coming back to the scenes between the Curtis brothers. You can feel how badly Darrel wants to keep his family together, even when Ponyboy hears just one more person telling him what to do.
For a show with this much death and tragedy, I walked out of the Civic feeling surprisingly hopeful. So much of that comes down to Ponyboy. After everything he’s seen, he can still imagine something better.
Go see it while it’s at the Civic. Do it… do it for Johnny. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
The Outsiders is currently playing at the San Diego Civic Theatre. For more info and tickets: Broadway San Diego
