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The marquee of the Goodman Theatre in downtown Chicago, where the musical “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” is running through Aug. 11, 2024.
Credit: Benjamin Payne / GPB News
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Review: ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ takes the stage in lively musical adaptation
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LISTEN: 30 years after hitting bookstores, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” is now a musical. GPB Savannah reporter Benjamin Payne attended opening night in Chicago, and has this review.
As soon as I got to my seat at the Goodman Theatre, no longer did I feel like I was in Chicago; instead, I was transported back home — back to the city I had just traveled some 700 miles from: Savannah.
The soothing buzz of recorded cicadas reverberated throughout the Goodman's 856-seat mainstage theater. Gothic angel sculptures evoked Bonaventure Cemetery. And dangling from the branches of live oak trees were tangled strands of Spanish moss — artificial, of course, to keep out the bugs.
And so the stage was set for opening night on July 8 of the musical adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt's 1994 best-selling true-crime travelogue set in the Hostess City of the South.
30 years after the book's publication, it translates far better to the stage than it did to the screen in Clint Eastwood's 1997 film version.
Whereas the movie tried to fit in far too many parts of the book, the musical hones in on the character who Berendt has said is readers' biggest favorite: The Lady Chablis.
Performed masterfully by J. Harrison Ghee, The Lady Chablis (or simply Chablis, for short) is a Black transgender nightclub performer constantly being told throughout the show to “rein it in” — edicts which she proudly ignores.
“We gotta be ready for a higher-type clientele,” a club manager tells Chablis, scolding her for seeking out white men — what he calls “race-mixing.”
Chablis retorts, “If the foxtrot and blue-rinse crowd wanna sniff out my gigs, they're more than welcome. But [if] you let them run the show, this place'll be one more piano bar playing the Johnny Mercer catalog. Now, I love me some Mercer, but that [expletive] don't make you sweat. And the Lord knows the Lord put me on this planet to make the people moist.”
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Ghee — who in 2023 became the first openly nonbinary person to win the Tony Award for best leading actor in a musical — bears an uncanny resemblance to the real Chablis, who many may be familiar with since she played herself in the movie.
Berendt, a friend of Chablis's until her death in 2016, told GPB after the show that the similarities between the two gave him “goosebumps,” adding that Chablis “commanded a room just the way J. did last night.”
The show is far more lighthearted and humorous than one might expect from a production that centers around a fatal shooting — the shooting of rebellious ne'er-do-well Danny Hansford by wealthy antiques dealer Jim Williams, with whom he was in a rocky relationship as both his lover and employee.
Williams is played by Broadway actor Tom Hewitt, who puts on a fun Southern accent without overdoing it; gone is the tortured drawl of Kevin Spacey from the film.
Above all else, the musical is an ode to Savannah and its welcoming atmosphere — for those who manage to get out alive. As a chorus of performers puts it in one song:
Come and revel in Savannah's splendor!
Take a seat, be a repeat offender.
Any race or faith or class or gender,
Fill your soul with grace!
Feel the warm embrace!
What a lovely place to die!
Williams' shooting of Hansford is cleverly hidden from the audience's view by framed paintings inside the elegant Mercer-Williams House, of which a beautiful replica facade is often featured throughout the show.
This concealment left me wanting a courtroom drama: Did Williams kill Hansford out of self-defense or out of cold blood?
Unfortunately, the mystery is never explored. This is the production's biggest weak point — a missed opportunity to explore the social dynamics of a 1980s jury in the Deep South deliberating on the fate of a gay man accused of murdering a bisexual man.
There is one brief exchange between Williams and the prosecutor, but it comes across as more of a one-sided interrogation in a police interview room rather than a high-stakes scenario of a defendant taking the stand with his freedom hanging in the balance.
Notwithstanding this shortcoming, the show's music, choreography and set design are phenomenal and first-rate.
According to director Rob Ashford, when the musical was first under development several years ago, the producers' original plan was to feature only songs by Savannah native Johnny Mercer, who is mentioned often in the book (and whose great-grandfather built the Mercer-Williams House) but who does not appear in it himself.
However, Ashford said that it was eventually determined that music by Mercer would not drive the plot forward. Instead, the show's 19 numbers are all original, with music and lyrics by Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown.
This is a wise move, as the Mercer catalog may be well known by older generations, but not so much among theatergoers who are, say, south of age 60.
Also wise is the decision to not include an author character, since in the book, Berendt is a largely impartial narrator with little to lose. Instead, the audience is addressed as the author, giving the cast a clever way to break the fourth wall from time to time.
No one engages theatergoers like Ghee, whose performance as Chablis is worth the price of admission alone. Their rendition of “Butterflies,” the show's final song, ends the production on a defiant high note:
You want some true true crime, my babies,
You don't have to look too far,
But the story I tell is important as hell,
So get hip to my seminar.
I say to my sisters and brothers and others,
No matter what you are:
When the powers-that-be wanna bury your bliss,
You don't have to be okay with this.
It's time to bust open that chrysalis
And spread your wings and fly, butterflies!
This exemplifies the musical's underlying message: to be your full self, unapologetically. That might sound trite, but Chablis's journey as a Black trans performer 40 years ago in the Deep South is more timely now than ever: In Georgia this year, Republicans introduced a bill that would have removed hate crime protections for LGBTQ Georgians — just one example of new attempts by state governments to restrict rights for gender nonconforming people.
Ghee, who grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, told GPB that the show has a lot to say about the South.
“It says that there's a lot of history there and it says that there's a lot of opportunity to grow and to expand,” they said. “And that's what excited me about this story — an opportunity from growing up in the South to show not only the South but the world that we have a long way to go to be free and to live in joy and safety.”
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil runs through Aug. 11 at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, but that may not be your only chance to see the show: Producers are in talks to bring the musical to Broadway and — to the delight of Georgians — Savannah.
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