J.S. Streible stars in Gloaming, Nowhere, a show exploring the mind and soul of present-day Appalachia for which he has written the music, lyrics and book.
Gloaming, Nowhere is variously described as “the world’s first Neo-Appalachian, Afrolachian, Southern Pop Revusical,” a “patchwork kaleidoscopic collage,” and “a musical for people who don’t like musicals.” This show by quadruple-threat J.S. Streible (composer, lyricist, librettist, and sole performer) has landed on the micro-stage of the Huron Room in the basement of Off-Broadway’s SoHo Playhouse after a “multi-state Appalachian tour.” Streible makes no secret that he hopes Gloaming, Nowhere is destined for Broadway.
Gloaming, Nowhere is narrated by a Southern balladeer who, like all the musical’s characters, is played by Streible. Photographs by Mackenzie Spivey.
Though advertised as a one-actor musical play, Gloaming, Nowhere may be characterized more accurately as a dramatic song cycle. As in a musical, this cycle features multiple characters, but identifying and following them on a single hearing is a challenge. Consulting the script is helpful and, to be fair, the characters may become more distinctive in performance as Streible’s onstage work develops (especially if a strong directorial hand and more objective oversight are added). Streible and his production partner, Mackenzie Spivey (who’s also his wife), may be too close to the material at present to assess its weaknesses.
The show, which runs 85 minutes (including an intermission), is set in Nowhere, a community in southern Appalachia, presumably the small Virginia town, close by the northern borders of Tennessee and North Carolina, which Streible calls home. The time is “gloaming,” a poetic term, from the Middle English gloming, which means dusk or twilight. It’s a murky, uncertain time, neither day or night, and an evocative symbol of the issues Streible raises in the play.
At the outset of the performance, in the pitch dark preceding the first scene, a neutrally accented voice speaks to the audience: “Hello everybody. It’s assumed you’re from Somewhere and Sometime. Welcome to Nowhere. Nowhere‘s a curious place.”
When the stage lights come up, the audience meets the Storyteller, guide to the show. He introduces the protagonist, called merely The Man—an Appalachian who’s “of the land, not from it.” As the Storyteller sings: “Born in the Southland / Raised by a white man / Got a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. / Something, something to prove.”
The Man leaves his birthplace (the kind of community that used to be dismissed as a one-horse town) to journey around Appalachia, reflecting on his biracial identity, his place in the white-dominated South, and how this long-impoverished region fits in present-day America. Like Voltaire’s Candide, the Man encounters figures who pique his curiosity: a Waffle House waitress aching for a more satisfying existence but dithering endlessly about taking action; a preacher who wants reassurance that “there’s something to believe”; a Methuselah who’s seen it all but still has a lot to learn; and a couple of women who break his heart (“Oh, my baby, you drove me crazy,” he sings, “You’re tattooed on my mind”).
As a snake-oil salesman (a minor but colorful character), Streible offers customers “some lightly used, preowned, upcycled secondhand dreams.”
Those figures are promising, but they exist, on stage and page, as untapped potential. Some have pleasing songs to sing but, absent complexity or context, they don’t arrest spectators’ interest or elicit sympathy.
It’s difficult to imagine a time when the United States has been in greater need of empathy among its citizens and disparate classes: blue-collar citizens find highly educated people out of touch and patronizing; and so-called elites are bewildered by working-class voters condoning—often celebrating—lawlessness among elected officials. And then there are the severe disconnections among racial and ethnic groups. Streible’s dramatization of Appalachia’s populace could promote the kind of understanding that only art provides. Gloaming, Nowhere and Streible’s performance aren’t there yet.
In an eleven o’clock number, “Moonlight Walkin’,” the Man sings, “I’ve drank with the sinners / I’ve dined with the saints / Somewhere I vanished along the way / Not alive not dead, just a ghost in your head.” Neither the sinners or the saints are coming to life on the Soho Playhouse stage; and the protagonist doesn’t vanish—he’s nonexistent from the get-go. If Streible wants to make it to Broadway, he’ll need to rectify a number of problems in both the writing and his performance. He’d do well to have a look at what Andrew Scott is doing in Vanya at the Lucille Lortel. Like Streible, Scott is alone on stage, playing all eight characters in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and imbuing each with remarkable vividness.
What Vanya demonstrates is that characters must have life written into them, as well as being anointed with it by the actor. Without clarity of characterization, paired with nuance and precision in performance, no amount of developmental triage can help the people in a play maintain audience attention. And, unless spectators are engrossed and touched, plays seldom succeed.
J.S. Streible’s Gloaming, Nowhere runs through April 5 in the Huron Room at SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam St.). Evening performances are Tuesday to Saturday at 7 p.m.; matinees are Saturday at 3 p.m. For tickets and more information, visit sohoplayhouse.com.
Playwright, composer & lyricist: J.S. Streible
Direction & design: J.S. Streible & Mackenzie Spivey
