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Feud: Fire on the Mountain

nytheatre.com review by David DelGrosso
August 15, 2005

Feud: Fire on the Mountain by writer/director Creighton James is a new melodrama about the bloody Civil War-era conflict between the Hatfields and McCoys of West Virginia. It is an ambitious production in its size, giant by FringeNYC standards, with a cast of 18, including three musicians who sing and play accompaniment. James has a wide canvas to work with: a rich historical subject filled with events and a large ensemble of talented, age-appropriate actors and musicians who can evoke the period. Unfortunately, James narrows his exploration of this feud right from the beginning: he chooses a side.James’s McCoys are pious, goodly people, whose morals are looked to by their pacifist patron, “Ole” Ranel. They are like an Appalachian version of the Cratchits and even have their own Tiny Tim—in this case, Alifair, a mute, angelic six-year-old daughter with a tiny crutch. The Hatfields, led by “Devil” Anse Hatfield, are like Appalachian gangsters—an arch and menacing rogues' gallery of mustache-twirlers and knuckle-draggers. Despite the famous poverty of the area, they dress in dark suits, contrasting with the McCoy’s humble farm attire.The play condenses the 20 years of feuding into a few expedient and bloody months, and in the course of the play the Hatfields show themselves to be sadistic murderers and rapists while any violence from the McCoy side is always given just cause as self-defense or a passionate refusal to turn the other cheek against a clear wrong. The play is so partisan that it feels like McCoy propaganda—something the estate would commission to be performed at the family museum—and what is lost in this one-sidedness is any sense of moral ambiguity.About 2 hours and 20 ear-splitting starter pistol shots into the play, Ranel McCoy tries to persuade his sons to stop fighting, saying that violence begets violence, and that the aggressor always believes that right is on their side. His son retorts that his father has been a coward, and did not do enough to fight for his family. This argument would have been compelling had the play been grounded in the real history of the feud—where both sides had deeds which may have been justified under the circumstances, as well as acts despicable under any circumstances. But in the world of this play, such philosophical debate is moot. Like a tidy Hollywood fiction, the sides have been clearly divided into good and evil. In this world the McCoy patriarch does not need to worry about right and wrong because his side is right. And, unfortunately, the existence of such moral absolutes removes the most interesting dramatic questions from the table.