Fire on the Mountain

Seattle Repertory Theatre

Through March 24.

Less a play than a concert, Fire on the Mountain concerns Appalachia and its inhabitants who spend their lives—and deaths—digging coal: "It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,/Where the danger is double and the pleasures are few,/Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines/It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine."

There are 36 songs in Fire on the Mountain—laments for hardworking miners, church hymns, Saturday-night stomps, work chanteys, fist-shaking union songs, more laments for hardworking miners—and slightly didactic monologues interspersed between them about child labor, strikes, and how Appalachia became coal country. (It's a sad story: The hillbillies were farmers and sold their land to coal barons, condemning themselves and their descendents to an eternity of wage work.)

The most affecting piece of the production is its continuous documentary slide show, designed by director Randal Myler (who was nominated for a Tony for It Ain't Nothin' but the Blues, which played at the Rep in 2004). There are photos of coal-smudged miners, old ladies in rocking chairs, sawed-off mountaintops. It's a visual history lesson taking us from the days of mules and dynamite to gargantuan steam shovels while the musicians below belt out their 36 songs on fiddles, banjos, and mandolins.

Music director Dan Wheetman (also of Blues) has put together a representative compilation of tunes and an excellent team of musicians, but sometimes the presentation is stale. Buddy at the 5th Avenue had the same problem—it's nearly impossible to re-create the hand-clapping, foot-stomping thrill of a rock show or a hillbilly dance in a fancy theater. Without that juice, we're too often left watching a desiccated imitation, a theme-park diorama. BRENDAN KILEY

Girls and Gods or, Prometheus Unwed

Printer's Devil Theater at Capitol Hill Arts Center

Through March 31.

Scot Augustson is one of our finer local playwrights. He packs his scripts (Plants and Animals, Why? Why? Why?, Sgt. Rigsby and His Amazing Silhouettes, and Gilgamesh, IA, to name a few) with endearing eccentrics, smart ideas, and biting wit. Some, like Gilgamesh, IA, are serious and tender. Others, like Sgt. Rigsby, are satirical and lewd. But they are all slyly entertaining. Watching a great Augustson play is like having a conversation with someone much cleverer than you, someone who is always a few steps ahead, delivering punch lines before you realize he is telling a joke.

Which is why it's disappointing to find his new play, Girls and Gods, only halfway up Mount Great. The story is an inversion of the Greek rape myths—god knocks up mortal, abandons same. Wren (Stacey Plum), one of Zeus's unwilling babymamas, turns the tables on Zeus and Dionysius, arranging for them to get drunk, then raped by a bull, then spirited away to the 20th century and the Lillian Erstwhile Home for Unwed Mothers, where their powers are nullified and their egos are bruised, mostly by the gossip of their fellow inmates: "Have you ever talked to a girl who's done it with Zeus? Two words: lousy lay."

The premise sounds delightful but the script is flabbier and less inspired than Augustson's usual material. At over two hours, it doesn't justify its length. There are confusing patches (is Dr. Hume's mysterious uncle just a deus ex machina? why, exactly, can't Zeus hurl his thunderbolts in the modern world?), there are snoozy tangents, and some of the performances are dull. (Though Plum and Stephen Hando as Dionysus shake us back awake every time they walk onstage.)

Girls and Gods has a few great Augustsonian moments (including an exegesis of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and fancy double entendres that reference physics and etymology) but this is not the playwright at his most divine. BRENDAN KILEY

Before It Hits Home

Brownbox Theatre

Through March 25.

Before It Hits Home is an issue-heavy play: Wendal (G. To'mas Jones), an African-American man who's been in a gay relationship on the down-low for seven years, discovers he has AIDS and goes home to his family to die. Jones gives an excellent, charismatic performance, deteriorating onstage in what amounts to a two-hour death scene and providing a backbone for a sometimes-spotty cast.

Wendal's family—especially Kathya Alexander as his mother and Tonya D. White as his Aunt Maybelle—do some cozy bantering in the first act, creating a believable family feeling. From the beginning of the second act, when Wendal reveals that he has AIDS, the message (to wit: the African-American community suffers from irrational fear of AIDS and deep-seated homophobia) hammers in as his mother and aunt shun and abandon Wendal to his death. Wendal's father (Bernie Hall) at first gives a wobbly performance riddled with dropped lines, but as his momentum increases—he screams and throws his son around the set in a burst of energy before weary acceptance kicks in and he becomes the sole, sorrowful caretaker at Wendal's death bed—he becomes the most touching character in the play.

There's nothing wrong with issue plays per se, as long as they're not just preaching to the converted. The shocked, tsking noises that came from the opening-night crowd when Wendal first kissed his lover (Abdel Luis Rodriguez) proved that some audience members could stand a little education. Before It Hits Home is bitter medicine, but there's a chance it could actually help. PAUL CONSTANT