“Hard Times” is that rare musical where you walk in humming the tunes. In fact, it’s got to be the most tuneful show you’ll ever see about the 1863 Civil War draft riots, thanks to its Stephen Foster score — “Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair,” “Oh! Susanna,” “Beautiful Dreamer” and “Old Folks at Home,” better known as “Swanee River.”
Larry Kirwan, the leader of the rock group Black 47, had the inspired idea to join Foster’s classics to an original story set in a saloon run by a free black woman, Nelly (Amelia Campbell), in the violent Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan. Just outside the premises, the riots are raging, with immigrant Irishmen rebelling against the draft, and attacking the blacks they blame for the situation.
One of the characters in this piece is Stephen Foster (Jed Peterson), depicted here as a forlorn, possibly gay alcoholic who’s separated from his wife (Erin West), seen in flashbacks.
The tension is immediately established in the opening number, when young Irish singer/dancer Owen (a terrific John Charles McLaughlin) performs a bitterly angry rendition of “Camptown Races” in blackface.
The plot, which involves such elements as the hatred ward boss Michael (Philip Callen) bears toward the Irish “Paddies” and his infatuation with Nelly despite his racist tendencies, never really amounts to very much. But it provides a rich atmosphere for Foster’s songs, which have been seamlessly augmented with some tuneful originals by Kirwan.
Presented as part of the fifth annual 1st Irish Theatre Festival, it’s a modest production housed in a small storefront theater. But it bursts with life, thanks to Kira Simring’s inventive staging and the superb singing and dancing performed to the accompaniment of a first rate, five-piece band.
By the near-climactic, rousing rendition of “Hard Times Come Again No More,” you may find yourself believing they won’t.