"And in one of them, he says, 'Oh, I didn't mean to shoot that little girl with the curly hair. "From everything we researched, he was a beloved member of the family," Thompson said.įrom letters to lyrics: "First of all, Jesse was coached and manipulated by journalist John Newman Edwards, who publishes Jesse's letters almost like manifestos," Poling said. In the show, Samuel gets his own song, "That's Me," almost as if he's pointing at the pictures to explain who he is. He is the son of an enslaved woman, Charlotte Garrett, and Reuben Samuel, Jesse's stepfather. Perry Samuel (Jordan Leggett) is in photographs of the family, usually dead center, holding the camera's gaze. Jesse had a Black stepbrother?: It's the American story, where freedom and slavery coil together like candy stripes. Now the number gets the biggest applause. But then he thought that it didn't fit and considered dropping it from the show. "I just wanted to make some hay out of the singing and dancing corpses," the lyricist said. " Two Unlucky Stiffs": Taking a cue from famous daguerreotypes of deceased James-Younger Gang members Bill Chadwell and Clell Miller, Poling crafted a song about the dead robbers. And the conveyor belt of murder pulses on. Jesse would die of a shot to the back some years later and his killer, Robert Ford, would be killed by another shooter in a scene that recalls Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby. Instead, the attempted robbery became his gang's Waterloo. "The thought was that the bank's money came from a Union military man who stole from the South," Thompson said. Why Minnesota?: Jesse wanted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield because of his belief in the Lost Cause, that the South was noble and unfairly treated by the North over slavery. Here are the five surprising takeaways from the musical revue: In fact, the characters do not use real guns but their fingers prove potent as they're dusted off and aimed for the show's high body count - 35 in all. While it flows with the energy of a carnival, "Jesse" is not a western pastiche. "Jesse" is perhaps the most accomplished show yet by the team of Poling, Hatcher and Elhai, best known for "Glensheen."
The music, arranged by Robert Elhai, goes from rock to honky-tonk to classic show tunes. Memorable musical numbers include as "I Am the Gun," the Northfield Choir's hymnlike "Mankind" and "Two Unlucky Stiffs," about a pair of dancing cadavers played with deadpan wit by Jen Burleigh-Bentz and Sasha Andreev. The cast, including James Ramlet as Edwards, Angela Timberman as mother Zerelda and Dane Stauffer as Frank James, sometimes break the fourth wall. Episodes of his life float into view in between musical numbers pumped out by a nimble Ray Berg-led band. The conceit is that Jesse is doing a farewell concert about his exploits before his downfall in Northfield, Minn. The show is a takedown, not a song-and-dance hagiography. His exploits and demise get an engagingly entertaining staging by artistic director Richard Thompson. This Jesse (Adam Qualls with insouciant menace) is a craven, solicitous cad who starts in glory and ends in death. But that dashing image comes up for a sharp reappraisal in "The Defeat of Jesse James," a new musical by Chan Poling and Jeffrey Hatcher that's rocking out onstage at St. Jesse James had John Newman Edwards, a journalist who helped create his enduring folk legend.Ī bank robber and killer who married his cousin, 19th-century outlaw Jesse James, played on screen by the likes of Tyrone Power and Brad Pitt, has held the public's imagination as a sort of Robin Hood. Tom Parker, an illegal Dutch immigrant who became his manager and mythmaker.
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