By Lucy Komisar
“The Outsiders” by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine is based on a novel written for teenagers by a teenager (she was 16) and tells of kids full of angst. The youths are poor, some suffering from addiction, and they resent kids of their age with money. Some still have dreams of getting out to a better life. So this is about class. And turns out the rich kids don’t feel all that better off.
It’s 1967 and these “outsiders” are in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ponyboy Curtis (Brody Grant), the dreamer, is 14. The story itself is rather hokey, but director Danya Taymor pulls a lively musical out of the book. She is helped by a fine cast and by the music. It starts with a folk-rock sound, then rock with a beat, softer folk, rock you can dance to, and that’s only the first four numbers. There’s also some country. You won’t hear the same songs and beats over and over. You can hear the songs here.
The town is split between rich and poor. Ponyboy sings, “We had places to go, we had things to do. So they took one town and they split it in two. The money went west, take the grease to the east. The train ran down the belly of the beast.”
So, there’s a class divide: “And there’s just one thing you need to know. You got Greasers and Socs, that’s how it’s always been
And that’s probably how it’s always gonna go.”
Socs are the socialites. Think “West Side Story” about class instead of ethnicity, rich and poor instead of Anglos and Latinos.
Ponyboy: “There’s another side of Tulsa that I hardly ever see.
It’s like some kind of fairy tale land.
The grass is always greener and the streets are always clean.
All the girls are pretty there and all the guys are mean.
We call them Socs ’cause they live like socialites.
Barbecues and graduation days
With better clothes and better cars and better lives.”
His parents were killed in a car accident and his oldest brother Darrell (Brent Comer) had to drop out of school and works to support the family, which includes a middle brother Sodapop (Jason Schmidt).
Darrell: “I dropped out of school ’cause I had to earn a dollar. Now I’m stuck between the role of a brother and a father. Some people told me that I threw it all away. Now I wonder if they’re right at the end of the day.”
The dreamer Ponyboy is reading Great Expectations, about Dickens’ orphan boy Pip.
“Scuse me, Mr. Dickens, I’ve got something on my mind.
I’ve tried but I can’t seem to let it go.
Lately I’ve been thinking about that little orphan boy
Whose parents died and left him all alone.
Then an outlaw came one fateful day
While standing at his parent’s grave
And offered him another way to climb.
And I wonder
Is that orphan story mine?”
The brothers along with Ponyboy‘s friend Johnny Cade (Sky Lakota-Lynch) are in a gang, the Greasers. A leader of the group is Dallas Wilson (Joshua Boone), a black kid from New York. On the other side are the “Socs,” the socialites, the rich kids.
The kids are good at street dancing: “We ain’t got money but we’ve got something.” It’s R&B.
Then one of the poor kids, Johnny Cade, is beaten bloody by the Socs. Pony to his buddies: “Remember how Johnny looked when he got beat up? Why do the Socs hate us so much?” The two sides confront each other at the drive-in. (West Side Story’s “the dance.”)
And Ponyboy talks to a rich girl, Cherry Valance (Emma Pittman). She is impressed he is reading “Great Expectations.”
Cherry: “I was under the impression You’d never read a book at all. Too wrapped up in your aggression. Out on the street and fighting brawls.
And now you’re talking ’bout the sunset And how the colors turn bright. Suddenly it seems That I could talk to you for hours. But these hours go like minutes. I could talk to you all night.
I never talk like this with Socs
We keep our feelings to ourselves
I tell my friends I like their parties
Wishing I was somewhere else.”
Ponyboy:” I know exactly what you’re saying.
You gotta fake it to belong.
I’d rather read than fight a rumble.
But Greasers have to go along.”
Turns out life is not terrific for all the rich kids. Some haven’t heard from their dads.
But then there’s another fight.
Johnny Cade: “We were walking through the park tonight
Just trying to get home
The Socs came and picked a fight
It got out of control.”
They pushed Ponyboy’s head into a drum of water.
Ponyboy: “They had me underwater
They were gonna take my life
I completely went unconscious
When I came to
There was Johnny with his knife.”
Bob (Kevin William Paul), Cherry’s boyfriend, attacks and Ponyboy in self-defense knifes, kills him.
A cop on the scene beats Dallas, the black guy.
A girl burns a Greaser with a cigarette.
Should he flee because can’t get a fair trial?
Dallas: “Run, run brother.
You gotta get out while you can.
Run, take cover.
I’m gonna come up with a plan.
I hate to make you go,
But there ain’t no other way.
Even though it kills me to say
Run, run brother.”
They get out on a train. Hide out in an abandoned church
Then a deus ex machina. Turns out kids are trapped in a fire in the church. And the two Greasers save them. It is all over the newspapers. Headlines: “Hoods turned heroes…some low-down dirty Greasers accused of murder in the first degree. Imagine this: they save some kids…Hoods turned heroes.”
This is TV stuff. It starts out hokey and it ends hokey. The actors are talented. Also good dancers to choreography by Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman. They deserved a better script. But teens will like it.
“The Outsiders.” Book by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine. Music & lyrics by Jonathan Clay & Zach Chance and Justin Levine. Based on the novel by S.E. Hinton and the film by Francis Ford Coppola. Jacobs Theatre, 242 West 45th Street, NYC. Tkts 212-239-6200. Runtime 2hrs25min. The songs. Opened April 11, 2024. Open run. Review on New York Theatre Wire.