Though only an occasional song or scene or joke hits the mark, a hard-working young cast have fun playing cave people in Brian Holden, Matt Lang, Nick Lang, Meredith Stepien, and Mark Swiderski’s Firebringer: A New Stone Age Musical.

Potty-mouthed narrator Molag (Sabrina Velasquez) opens the show by introducing us to prehistoric zanies Smelly-Balls (Cade Stedmen) and Chorn (Beth Redwood), whose quarrel about the appropriate response to her one-word vocabulary (“Chorn!”) ends when comely cavewoman Jemilla (Sarah Cottier) suggests that Smelly-Balls (whose name reflects the Firebringer creators’ level of sophistication) change his point of view and “just say yes.”

Meanwhile elsewhere in the cave compound, upstart tribe member Zazzalil (Tiffany Oliver) discovers she would rather dance than work, a decision that puts her at odds with Jemilla; Ducker (Brian Felker) wears the duck his fellow tribe members worship atop his head as befits his role as Chief Wizard; and cave ditz Keeri (Hope English) gathers items she thinks are nuts and berries, but turn out to be anything but, all of the above taking place before stone weapons get discovered and rock these cave people’s world, though not nearly as much as the discovery of fire soon will.

Along the way, smart-and-pretty Emberly (Corrine Glazer) finds herself attracted to a hairy-chested caveman from another tribe (Luke Martinez as Grunt), though neither seems capable of saying the other’s name right; the gullible Tiblyn (Kasey Furginson) learns she’s wasted the past seventeen years under the mistaken impression she’s been holding up the skies with her raised hands; and a mammoth known as Trunkel and a saber-toothed tiger named Snarl keep the tribe in a stage of constant terror.

And that’s just Act One of a two-and-a-half-hour musical that would work a whole lot better had its writers had the sense to trim it down to ninety-minutes, no intermission.

It’s not just that Firebringer book-writing team (Holden and the Lang brothers “with additional writing by Stepien”) don’t know how to edit themselves where running time is concerned. They operate under the misconception that the more frequently their characters say “fuck” and “shit,” the funnier they will be, a reliance on foul-mouthed humor that should have gone out the window by the time the four of them reached high school, that is unless they were as talented as South Park/Book Of Mormon’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, which they’re not.

Composer-lyricists Stepien and Swiderski do brighten things up considerably with the jazzy/rappy “We Got Work To do,” the Stephen Schwartzian “What If,” the jaunty “Just A Taste,” the rousing “The Night Belongs To Us,” and the sweetly romantic “Paint Me,” which also turns out to be the musical’s most engaging sequence, one that has Emerbly and Grunt discovering both prehistoric art and love.

It’s easy to see why producer-director Timothy Jon Borquez and The Foothill Performing Arts Council chose Firebringer as a follow-up to last fall’s absolutely fabulous The Theory Of Relativity. Both are recent east-coast hits that SoCal audiences had yet to discover and both feature an entirely 20something company of players, in Firebringer’s case one dominated by meaty female roles.

Still, if The Theory Of Relativity inspired me to rave about its “musical theater magic” and “one of the most tuneful and insightful scores” I’d heard in recent years, the considerably less magical, albeit still tuneful Firebringer limits me to cheering Cottier, English, Glazer, Martinez, and Oliver’s particularly appealing work, their castmates’ enthusiasm, and everyone’s terrific vocals. (Grace Gaither’s Shwoopsie, Jaiden Oliver’s Kid #2, Perla Rodriguez’s Kid #1, and Justin Taylor’s Clark/Snarl complete the ensemble reviewed here.)

Still, I can’t help wishing these committed kids had less cartoonish characters to portray and a more coherent plot to work with as they execute Anne Marie Osgood’s quirky dance moves and harmonize to prerecorded tracks under Marthew Park’s assured musical direction, their voices expertly amped by sound designers Andrew Brown, Scott Manke, and Borquez.

Yessica Armenta’s clever Flintstones-inspired costumes and Jayline Prado’s amusing stone-age properties earn the evening’s biggest design cheers, and Jesse Santos and Yajayra Franco have come up with some vivid effects to light Borquez’s colorful, no-frills prehistoric set. (I’m opting not to include publicity shots taken outdoors as they do not reflect the production’s scenic and lighting designs).

Additional program credits are shared by Alex Borquez (music production), Prado (stage manager and producer’s assistant), Santos (technical director), and Grady Schleuder (assistant technical director).

I attended Firebringer fearing it might not be my thing, but hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Though for the most part my worries turned out to be well-founded, its enthusiastic cast, a number of winning songs, and several charming scenes allow me to give it a quarter-thumb’s up.

T.U. Studios, 10943 Camarillo St., North Hollywood.
https://www.ticketor.com/thefpac

–Steven Stanley
July 28, 2019

Tags: Brian Holden, Foothill Performing Arts Council, Los Angeles Theater Review, Mark Swiderski, Matt Lang, Meredith Stepien, Nick Lang