Exit Wagner’s `Ring,’ enter Johnny Cash’s
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After 16 months of Wotan, Alberich, Siegfried, Brunnhilde and the gang --who will wrap things up the Los Angeles Opera’s ‘Ring’ cycle Wednesday and Saturday with ‘Siegfried’ and ‘Gotterdammerung’ -- FCLO Music Theatre will open ‘Ring of Fire’ on July 16, and it has nothing to do with Richard Wagner.
The subtitle in Fullerton is ‘The Johnny Cash Musical Show.’ While Achim Freyer’s staging of ‘Der Ring Des Nibelungen’ has featured a Man in Black -- chief god Wotan in his earthly guise as The Wanderer -- the Fullerton ‘Ring’ is strictly about the country music great.
The jukebox musical, featuring songs from the Cash catalog, was created by musical theater veteran Richard Maltby Jr. and died a quick death on Broadway in 2006. But it has enjoyed an afterlife with Jason Edwards, who starred in the Broadway production and will be on stage in Fullerton. Edwards headlined the first area production last year at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.
There is undeniable common ground between Wagner’s ‘Ring’ and the Cash tribute’s title song: love is a burning thing in both.
-- Mike Boehm
Recent and related:
Review: `Ring of Fire’ at La Mirada Theatre The voice of Everyman in Black (obituary)
