If the title – Murder Ballad –  isn’t a dead giveaway, the narrator of this story tells you what’s going to happen in the opening number: someone is going to die.

And that’s how Road Less Traveled Productions is kicking off its 20^th season. The other point of distinction is that this is RLTP’s first musical in its history.

Think of this like a rock opera with a twist. While there is no spoken dialogue, this is a story of love and betrayal all told in song and plenty of strong, provocative acting by a dynamic cast.

Director Doug Weyand had himself a dream team here. Leah Berst, Jenn Stafford, Anthony Alcocer, and Ricky Needham comprise a (forgive the cliché) killer ensemble for playwright Julia Jordan’s boy-meets-girl-till-it-all-goes-wrong story.

In brief, Tom (Alcocer) and Sara (Stafford) are hard-partiers with high-flyin’ dreams. They have a fiery kind of love until their equally fiery break up. As Sara is staggering home, she literally bumps into Michael (Needham), a gentle and kind poet. She boozily flirts and he takes her home to chastely sleep it off as he promises to take care of her. She begins to love this kind and very different man and “Little by Little” (as Michael sings) they fall in love and build a more conventional life together. All is well as they marry and have a baby and while Sara’s OK to give up her rocker boots for Rothy ballerina flats, after a few years, she finds Tom’s phone number again. And it starts to get all ugly.

Berst is the narrator and she is fierce. From the red tipped hair to the black stiletto boots, she’s rock solid as she delivers the recitative. Her voice is extraordinary and she moves around the stage, setting each scene with a prescient sort of knowing.  

Stafford’s wild curls and stunning voice capture Sara’s frenetic energy perfectly. Needham is the ideal dad, a loving husband, and if he’s disappointed to give up poetry for a job that pays the bills, he’s pragmatic about giving his daughter a good life. Needham plays him like the coolest, most loveable nerd there is. Alcocer has this whole bad boy thing down pat. He has the swagger and piercing gaze along with a rich and resonant voice.

It is all about the ensemble, and this quartet has some good stuff all around it. Dyan Burlingham’s set is appealing: she uses some risers and platforms in key places and keeps the rest of the look sleek and simple. John Rickus does some super cool things with lighting design: there’s one moment, when passions are elevated, and Tom appears on the highest platform, low lit with a searing red light. His eyes are smoldering and he’s stock-still in that lighting scheme that’s both soft and harsh in the same moment. It’s wild how impactful this moment is to see.

I admit, I had to ‘sit’ with this show for a bit. The rock opera format was intriguing but I found Juliana Nash’s ‘songs’ to be rather one-note (to use a cooking term) and there wasn’t a melody that stayed with me as I left the theatre. It sounded like one long song. An insert in the program (starting this week) will list song titles. Joe Isgar directed the off-stage band with himself on keyboards, Aneris Rivera Wagner on drums, Yamilla Tate on bass, and Dillon Slater on guitar. Even with a driving rock beat, it was the dynamics between the actor/singers that kept pulling me back into the story.

The very ending was a bit…odd. There was indeed the promised death. And then all characters returned to the stage with a cautionary reminder about the price of infidelity. I would have preferred the narrator to button it all up for us.

All told, it’s a wild season starter, and congratulations to the RLTP team for launching its new season with something unexpected. Murder Ballad is on stage to October 15. It runs a little over two hours with an intermission. Find details and tickets at  https://www.roadlesstraveledproductions.org/. And whatever you do, stay away from your ex-lovers. They’re nothing but trouble.