Review: “The Outsiders” musical from Broadway in Chicago is thrilling. Grease, grit and all

When S.E. Hinton’s young adult novel “The Outsiders” came out in 1967, it revolutionized the genre. Her raw, redemptive story of a fatal class war between Tulsa teens was part “Rebel Without a Cause,” part “Romeo and Juliet” and part “Great Expectations” but wholly its own creation.

More than half a century later, “The Outsiders” is a thrilling, can’t-look-away-even-when-you-want-to musical that captures its source material in tone, spirit and story.

Running through Feb. 22 at the Loop’s Cadillac Palace Theatre, the Tony-winning musical delivers a score (music and lyrics by Justin Levine and Jamestown Revival’s Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) that veers between hypnotic ballads and stomping bangers. The book (by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine) hurtles the plot forward with the force of the oncoming train that barrels through the second act.

Also inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 movie adaptation, the 1967-set musical uses sound and visuals to fully immerse the audience in a gritty, merciless world where hope and joy are hard won.

Director Danya Taymor’s richly detailed production lays bare the trauma of surviving police brutality, domestic violence and generational poverty while also celebrating ferocious love and loyalty.

Like Hinton’s book, the musical is centered on Ponyboy Curtis (Nolan White). Ponyboy and little brother Sodapop (Corbin Drew Ross) are orphans cared for by older brother Darrel (Travis Roy Rogers), a once promising football star now working a crap job to keep his brothers fed and housed. The Curtis home is redolent with love, grief, rage and fear. It is also a place where the poems of Robert Frost and Charles Dickens factor: Both “Great Expectations” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay” are threaded through “The Outsiders” in music, lyrics and dialogue.

Like the other greasers, Ponyboy and his best friend Johnny Cade (Bonale Fambrini) look to Dallas Winston (Tyler Jordan Wesley) as a protector and father figure. But Dallas can’t stop the vicious beatings the impoverished greasers take from the city’s rich kids, or “socs” (short for socialites). When Ponyboy and Johnny Cade are befriended by soc queen Cherry Valance (Emma Hearn), the stage is set for a series of devastating circumstances that drive Ponyboy and Johnny into hiding.

The opening number sets the bar high. Ponyboy begins the exposition-heavy “Tulsa ‘67” as an exquisitely rendered ballad before the music swells in a mighty crescendo as the ensemble joins in and floods the stage with harmonies. When the greasers launch into the defiantly proud “Grease,” the stage pops with the energy and anger of young people pushed to the outermost margins of society.

Taymor’s cast fires on all cylinders. White captures Ponyboy’s vulnerability and intelligence, as well as the swagger of a teenager coming into his own. Fambrini’s Johnny is a soft-spoken dreamer who can recite Robert Frost poetry and wield a blade with equal impact. Hearn’s Cherry is conflicted and entitled, her complex character evolution believable and empathetic.

Dallas is the stretched-to-its-limit cord holding the greaser community together. He’s slightly older, inarguably charismatic and determined to wrest justice from a world where there is almost none. Wesley’s “Little Brother” is the vocal highlight of the score. Its lyrics are merciless, their anguish overpowering, the melody itself a thing of breathtaking beauty.

Dallas is Black (his race isn’t specified in the book), which deeply intensifies an anxiety-provoking, chilling scene when he’s cornered by a well-armed Tulsa cop (Dante D’Antonio). It’s worth noting the historical context here, specifically the 1921 Tulsa Massacre when an armed white mob murdered hundreds of Black residents. The event is not referenced, but as the scene makes horrifically clear, the mindset that led to it remains alive and well in Tulsa, 1967.

Jeff and Rick Kuperman’s choreography is explosive. The climactic second-act scorcher “Trouble” is at once beautiful and stomach-churning — an all-ensemble showstopper of music, motion and light. Sound effects specialist Taylor Bense pummels the stage with queasy realism throughout: The awful thunk of Ponyboy’s head, smacked into a carhood; the suffocating whoosh of water when you can’t come up for air; the piercing ring that drowns out all other sound when you’ve been knocked in the head.

The bloody, bone-crunching tumult in the final battle is highly stylized. There are acrobatics, hip-hop, ballet and modern dance styles all detonating like grenades as the brawl continues. You will not be able to look away.

Lighting (Brian MacDevitt), set (AMP Scenography, featuring Tatiana Kahvegian) and projection (Hana S. Kim) designers create vivid, intricate worlds, Kahvegian’s wood-and-scaffolding set morphing via lights and projection into drive-in movie theater, an abandoned church, a tenement yard and a vast night sky punctuated by shooting stars.

Like everything else in “The Outsiders,” the stage world created is immersive, powerful and unforgettable.