Johnny Cash musical Ring of Fire needs a little more fire in its belly

For many years, I lived in an apartment across the hall from a couple of guys who had a famous picture of Johnny Cash on the outside of their door. The picture was of a scowling Johnny Cash with his middle finger extended straight toward the camera.

And so for years, the last thing I saw when I left my apartment, and the first thing I saw when I got home, was Johnny Cash giving me the finger.

That kind of "finger in your face" attitude is what I've always associated with Johnny Cash. And it's the kind of attitude I wish Ring of Fire, the jukebox musical opening Rainbow Stage's summer season, had a bit more of.

It's based on Cash's life and music — and there's a lot of it in the 135-minute (with intermission) production, from the hits like Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line to lesser-known tunes like Egg Suckin' Dog.

William Meade and Richard Maltby, Jr.'s 2006 musical is less a biographical play, though, and more a tribute concert. Through nearly three dozen tunes, interspersed sparingly with narration, we get the broad strokes of Cash's life — growing up in poverty, finding stardom and love, succumbing to addiction, and recovering.

But Meade and Maltby take an interesting approach. Rather than having a single actor play Cash, all eight musician/actors onstage play Cash — narrating moments from his life in the first person and singing his songs.

It's a smart way of working around trying to imitate someone as inimitable as Johnny Cash, and also has the effect of making him a sort of everyman.

It also lets each member of the four-man, four-woman cast shine. And there's some fantastic talent onstage in director Carson Nattrass's production — each actor plays an instrument (or several) in addition to singing duties, effectively becoming their own orchestra (backed up by musical director Gerry Atwell on keys and Greg Black on drums). 

Some of Ring of Fire's best moments come when the actor/musicians (Gilles Fournier, Jeff Giles, Jesse Grandmont, Elena Howard-Scott, Tom Keenan, Allison Lynch, Rena Semenko and Kaitlyn Semple) sing together. None of them sounds like Cash, but together they sound fantastic.

And while Johnny Cash purists may not be entirely satisfied, ditching any attempt at impersonations allows for some interesting interpretations of Cash's songs — Semenko's almost slinky take on Delia's Gone, for example.

There are some standout musical moments, too — a piano duel between Atwell and Semenko in Straight A's in Love and a fiddle battle between Lynch and Grandmont in Jackson are both spectacular. And the show closer, I've Been Everywhere, is a fun barnburner.

There are also moments when Ring of Fire finds a different, quieter kind of power — a stripped down, haunting take on All Over Again by Lynch and Grandmont is stunning.

But they show the kind of energy and power that Ring of Fire is just too often lacking. It becomes quickly apparent that what makes Johnny Cash songs great is, simply, Johnny Cash — that raw, rebel, finger-in-your-face attitude that gave his music such a tremendous power to reach out and grab you. And it's often absent in this show.

Certainly not helping the energy were significant balance issues on opening night — vocalists were often nearly drowned out by the instruments. This may be a technical glitch that corrects itself as the run goes on, or may be the result of Rainbow Stage's notoriously difficult acoustics — but either way, it was a problem on opening.

There are certainly worse ways to spend a summer night than listening to a talented group of musicians perform Johnny Cash songs. But Ring of Fire feels like it needs just a little more fire in its belly.

Ring of Fire runs at Rainbow Stage until July 15.