An enduring cultural icon, country singer-songwriter Johnny Cash’s five decades as an entertainer from 1954 until his death in 2003 made him an object of constant and lasting fascination. Over the course of his legendary career, he wrote more than a thousand songs and released dozens of albums. One of the best-selling music artists of all time, Cash sold more than 90 million records worldwide.
Some of his music is being shared with audiences at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in its season-opening production, Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash. His music was previously featured in a popular 2018 Playhouse production, Million Dollar Quartet, about an actual recording studio jam session between Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.
According to the publicity for the show’s Milwaukee debut, “Ring of Fire features music about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, and home and family.” Cash, who came to be known as “The Man in Black,” is not an onstage character in Ring of Fire, and the show does not attempt to portray the story of his life. That was done quite effectively in the 2005 film Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as his wife, June Carter. (They both won Academy Awards for their performances). Instead, Ring of Fire showcases Cash’s genre-spanning music that encompassed country, rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk and gospel music with performances of more than two dozen of the songs he is remembered for, some he wrote and some by others that he popularized.
Director, lyricist and producer Richard Maltby Jr. created a prior rendition of Ring of Fire with William Meade that ran briefly on Broadway in 2006. In 2013 Maltby, the creator of the much-loved 1978 Fats Waller musical Ain’t Misbehavin’, put together a new version of Ring of Fire, the one the Playhouse is presenting this season. It now features five actors — Alex Canty, Matt Cusack, Allison Ann Kelly, David Rowen and Leenya Rideout — who play their own instruments as they perform renditions of songs from Cash’s catalog, including “I Walk the Line,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I’ve Been Everywhere” and “Ring of Fire.”
Maltby’s approach to this revised version of Ring of Fire explores Cash’s core by juxtaposing and arranging songs he wrote or performed into a portrait that reflects the musician’s life without literally recounting it. Maltby made the script more intimate and personal, an ideal production for the Playhouse’s new Rouse Theater with seats closer to the stage, so audience members can more closely experience the action. Scenic designer Chen-Wei Liao has created a contemporary and impressionistic vibe for the Playhouse, leaning into muscular, modern styles of scenic art rather than the nostalgia of the period when Cash first found success.
In a 2013 interview with a Milwaukee newspaper when his revised version opened there, Maltby said, “Most of the songs in the show are songs people already know. And yet put together in an evening, they tell a story. Johnny had the soul of a poet, and when you listen to these songs together you hear something in them that is surprising. It’s the story of America. Perhaps it is an America that doesn’t exist anymore, but it certainly exists in our American mythology.” He called the show a “tale of growing up in simple, dirt-poor surroundings in the heartland of America, leaving home, traveling on wings of music, finding love, misadventure, success, faith, redemption and the love of a good woman — and eventually returning home.”
Ring of Fire has been staged for the Playhouse by Tony-award-nominated director and choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge. For the Cincinnati theater, she previously directed Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story (2020), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2017), The Secret Garden (2015) and Cabaret (2013). She says, “We’re tapping into aspects of Johnny Cash’s personality: ferocity, tenderness, despair, all the times of being human he encapsulated in his poetry of lyrics and his soul of music.”
It’s a sure bet that the Cincinnati Playhouse audience will enjoy another visit with the music of this iconic performer.
Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash, presented by the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park at Moe and Jack’s Place – The Rouse Theater in Eden Park, continues through October 1. More info: cincyplay.com.
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This article appears in Aug 9-22, 2023.