This tried-and-tested show returns to Soho for a short run, and is as rewarding as it ever was. It is a winning formula. The folk combo warms the audience up with a couple of numbers before David Lutken launches into his affectionate survey of the life and songs of Woody Guthrie. There are no gimmicks, just four talented musicians who trust the material and perform it with heart and fine technique. Behind the raised stage is a photo montage from Guthrie’s career, a window into the America of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and John Seinbeck, that is then reflected back through the next ninety minutes of words and music.
This is a show that rightly avoids sentimentality. Not only do we get an early window into Guthrie’s hard-scrabble background in Oklahoma, and the circumstances that led him into a life of social protest but we also get a sharp glimpse of how ornery he was to deal with. The first scene places us in a New York broadcast studio and a vigorous tussle between a producer who wanted songs of anodyne homespun and Guthrie’s determination to put out a hard-edged political message. This was an excellent example of how in a biographical show you can encapsulate a complex message in a distilled essential moment – showing rather than telling, providing something that the stage can do better than the lecture platform.
There is a real skill in providing just the right thread of contextual information and story while ensuring that we also receive a goodly measure of music, so that this is neither a concert nor a lecture. Lutken has the advantage of sharing with Guthrie a lean and cadaverous look, and he certainly has the guitar and singing chops. He takes us carefully and caringly through the many adventures of Guthrie on the road, in the merchant marine and into his tragic battle with Huntington’s disease. The songs emerge naturally from the sequencing and then take us forward onto the next chapter.
But this is far from being a one-man show. His collaborators display a mastery of an impressive range of instruments, and also sing more than capably. They plausibly inhabit the roles of family members, (with Raquel Chavez particularly striking as Guthrie’s troubled mother), colleagues, opponents and friends; and each of them has an opportunity to shine as soloists (David Finch even has a spot on the spoons!)
On the broadest level, the show is timely in two important ways. On the most basic level it reminds us that, sadly, many of the issues that mattered most to Guthrie still remain unaddressed today. But more pointedly, his career and music serve to show that, while we may be most preoccupied today with issues of gender, race and sexuality, they are all in many cases subsumed within even greater structural abuses of class and deprivation. There is a fundamental call to community and solidarity here which we all still need to hear.
The evening ends, as it must, with ‘This Land is Your Land’ where the audience can join in and make that kind of common cause with the themes of the show and with Guthrie himself.
Devised and performed by David M. Lutken
With Raquel Chavez, David Finch & Nyassa Grant
90 minutes
Until 10 September 2026
Photo Credit: Jake Oseland