Bella: An American Tall Tale
Opening Night: June 12, 2017
Closing: July 2, 2017
Theater: Playwrights Horizons
All aboard for a Western musical adventure the likes of which you’ve never experienced. As a wanted woman of mythic proportions looks to begin life anew out west, Bella takes us on the trip of a lifetime to escape her scandalous past and bounce into the arms of her awaiting Buffalo Soldier. Rowdy, wild, and hilarious, Kirsten Childs (Bubbly Black Girl…) infuses this tall tale with soulful tunes and madcap antics aplenty. Giddy-up to our get-down!
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
June 12, 2017
Tall tales are, by definition, unruly. But Kirsten Childs’s “Bella: An American Tall Tale,” a musical about the eventful travels of a wide-eyed beauty in the 1870s, sprawls in so many directions — with changes in tone to match (or mismatch) — that it collapses into inertia.
This comic picaresque, which opened on Monday night at Playwrights Horizons under the direction of Robert O’Hara, follows Bella (Ashley D. Kelley), who is celebrated in her hometown, Tupelo, Miss., for her shape. “All of her stacked proportions make a grown man scream/She cause your glasses to fog and steam,” goes a line in the opening number, “Big Booty Tupelo Gal.”
READ THE REVIEW