Dessa Rose (2005)

I’m a bit on-the-fence about this Ahrens & Flaherty musical.  It has some really nice elements going for it, but I think it also stumbles in places.  In general, I’d place it in the middle of the pack for Ahrens & Flaherty shows I’m familiar with, with the score being somewhat better than the story (some spoilers.)

Based on a novel of the same name by Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose follows the lives of two women in the Antebellum South.  Dessa Rose is a teenage slave girl infamous among plantation owners as the “devil-woman,” due to having led a slave revolt.  The pregnant Dessa Rose is brought to prison to be hanged for her crimes, and upon her escape, she crosses paths with Ruth, a white woman who’s struggled to keep her farm running since the departure of her husband some time before.  The two women immediately misjudge and mistrust one another, but circumstances throw them together and, providing they can cooperate, just might offer both of them a way out of their situation.

I haven’t read the book this is based on, so I don’t know how closely the story follows it, but the narrative bothers me in a few places, mainly because I feel it underestimates what being a slave was like.  The first is an account of Dessa Rose being whipped as a punishment, with her master only striking her “‘round her private places” so she won’t have visible signs of disobedience and therefore be easier to sell off.  Now, this is obviously reprehensible and I have no problem believing that a slave owner would devise such a cruel punishment (although, with a female slave, they might not in the interest of making sure she could still bear children.)  On the other hand, I do think it’s naïve to think a potential buyer wouldn’t see her completely naked.  It seems to suggest a tiny shred of bodily autonomy that slaves just didn’t have.  (Note:  although the scenario problematic to me, I love one of the lines in the song dealing with it.  “Don’t damage the goods. / Don’t scar where it shows” – chilling.)  I also call foul on the relative ease with which Dessa Rose and the other slaves run their “scheme” of having Ruth repeatedly sell them, running away, and meeting up to be sold again.  It almost comes across like escaping slavery is a cakewalk, and I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t have lost a larger number of their group, either from being unable to get away or from being killed in attempts to flee.

This frustrates me, because it can be really great at times.  I like the recurring theme of finding small joys and comforts to make the horrors of life bearable, particularly the importance of family, names, and passing on the memories of those you’ve lost.  Although the way things resolve between Dessa Rose and Ruth is a bit pat, I like the way both women learn to see one another better and work together as a result.  I always love Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s talent for mixing a modern Broadway-pop sound with the flavor of their setting, and here, the fiddles, vocal harmonies, and spiritual rhythms do a nice job of capturing the feel of the story.  It’s not my favorite score of theirs, but there are some excellent songs to be had (in part, it’s a little tough to get into the Off-Broadway cast recording, since there are a lot of dialogue tracks and so the music is broken up considerably.)  The original cast starred a beautifully-voiced LaChanze (who also worked with Ahrens & Flaherty in Once on This Island) who has some lovely songs to sink her vocal cords into.  Norm Lewis (who I know from the original casts of A New Brain and Side Show,) playing fellow slave Nathan, isn’t used as effectively, but it’s always a treat to hear his richly-gorgeous voice.