Print Feature: The Washington Post
By Geoffrey Himes
Feb. 13, 2020 at 11:13 a.m. EST
At this year’s Grammy Awards, folksinger-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell won the prize for best musical theater album for her Broadway hit “Hadestown.” But she’s not the only female, folk-flavored singer-songwriter who has a hit stage musical.
Erin McKeown (pronounced mick-YOAN) collaborated with playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes on “Miss You Like Hell,” which had a successful off-Broadway run at the Public Theater in 2018, followed by productions in Boston, Denver, Baltimore and now the Olney Theatre in Montgomery County.
Beatriz, the play’s protagonist, is an undocumented Mexican living in California, who hasn’t seen her teenage daughter Olivia since she lost custody to the girl’s American father four years ago. When Beatriz shows up unannounced in front of Olivia’s Philadelphia home, she convinces her daughter to jump in a pickup truck for a cross-country trip.
Along the way, mother and daughter wrestle with all their doubts and resentments, while visiting Yellowstone National Park and encountering friendly strangers and threatening law enforcement officers. The songs these characters sing reflect both the Broadway imperative of advancing the story and the folk-music impulse to explore inner feelings.
“From my singer-songwriter experience, I was able to draw a sense of poeticism, of vibes and feelings, to add to the clarity that musical theater demands,” McKeown says, speaking by phone from her home in Western Massachusetts. “It’s important that more musical theater is written by people from outside that world. We bring more looseness, the stock and trade of pop music. Sara Bareilles’s ‘Waitress’ is a good example of what the pop world can contribute.”
Folksinger and songwriter Erin McKeown wrote the music and lyrics for “Miss You Like Hell” at Olney Theatre. McKeown was well prepared for this fusion because she has loved musical theater, folk and pop music since she was a child in Fredericksburg. Her parents would regularly drive to the National Theatre and the Kennedy Center to see such touring productions as “Cats” and “Nine.” At the same time, she was listening to the records of such singer-songwriters as Suzanne Vega and Ani DiFranco. As McKeown gradually realized she was attracted to women, that epiphany provided a glue between the two genres.
“In singer-songwriter music, it’s more about impressions and fluidity,” she explains. “Musical theater is clear about who the singer is: ‘This is who I am.’ For a young person trying to find her identity, that was important. A lot of people like musicals, but they have a special place in the queer community.”