The Porch On Windy Hill
Written by Sherry Stregack Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse and David M. Lutken; Conceived and Directed by Sherry Stregack Lutken
Urban Stages Theater | 259 West 30th Street, New York, NY 10001
September 12 - October 11, 2025
Photo credit: Ben Hider
In this finely wrought tapestry of intergenerational memory, cultural excavation, and the elusive harmonies of familial reconciliation, we meet Mira — a 26-year-old bi-racial Korean American classical violinist, whose formidable talent is matched only by her internal dissonance. Alongside her partner Beckett — a polymathic troubadour whose intimate knowledge of vintage bluegrass is rivaled only by the affection with which he strums, plucks, and reveres his arsenal of acoustic stringed instruments — Mira seeks escape from the stifling inertia of pandemic-era Brooklyn. Their destination: the American South, where Beckett is conducting field research for a PhD exploring the richly entangled, multicultural roots of American folk music.
But, as is often the case in both life and dramaturgy, the journey falters before the destination comes into view. Their weary camper — an unreliable relic from another time, much like some of the music they chase — sputters and fails. Stranded and resigned to missing a long-anticipated hootenanny, Mira, ever resourceful and perhaps unconsciously guided by the currents of unfinished business, proposes a detour to Windy Hill, North Carolina — a quiet detour that quickly crescendos into revelation.
There, under the amber glow of stage lights and amidst the plaintive strains of banjo and fiddle, Mira beholds a ghost from her own living past: Edgar Wilson, her grandfather. Once an electrician by trade, now a beloved figure in regional folk and bluegrass circles, Edgar is mid-performance — his fingers nimble, his voice weathered, his presence unmistakable. It is a reunion not anticipated by Beckett, nor, perhaps, by Mira herself. For this is no casual family rift — she and her mother, Ruth, Edgar’s estranged daughter, have not spoken his name aloud in eighteen years.
The moment is layered with theatrical irony and emotional resonance, as Mira is forced to reckon with the very roots she has, consciously or not, sought to tune out. And Beckett, her unwitting companion, finds himself in the middle of a drama far more personal — and perhaps more enlightening — than any archival research could offer.
The Porch on Windy Hill is a play that brandishes its subtitle, “a new play with old music,” like a well-worn badge, or perhaps a warning label that you will be moved. This curious hybrid, currently on view at Urban Stages, ambles onto the stage with a toe-tapping swagger, its banjo in tune and its emotional compass wildly in reflection. It is a work co-authored by Sherry Stregack Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse, and David M. Lutken, and for a creation by committee, its parts are every bit as compelling as its whole.
Let’s begin where the play is on its most sublime footing: the old music. That venerable Appalachian songbook is the soul of this production, a homespun anthology of bluegrass standards and regional rarities, and when the actors are making music the evening takes flight. There’s a palpable authenticity in the way “Down in the Valley” or “Columbus Stockade Blues” pours forth from dulcimer, mandolin, guitar, and harmonized voices, like a stream bubbling over stones. These are gifted performers, each a musician of evident skill and spirit, and during the musical interludes, one could almost be persuaded that one has stumbled into a genuine front porch jam session somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains. One listens, one taps a foot, one is content.
But alas, the music must yield, and perhaps even surrender, to the dramatic ambitions of the piece, and here we sadly encounter the family unease. Emotions turn on a dime in this story, and not in the revelatory, Chekhovian sense, but with the whiplash of words and emotions that have been stored…and in this family, for decades. Characters rage and weep, not to embrace but to seethe, all seemingly without connective tissue, yet if you scratch at the scab, it is all tightly interwoven, the motivations are vividly drawn and their arcs are mapped with unresolved precision.
The titular porch—rendered with glorious rusticity by Andrew Robinson—is a triumph of scenic suggestion. One can practically smell the musty siding, feel the splinters beneath the soles, hear the dull thunk of the rotary phone through the warped screen door. It is a set that promises a weather-beaten realism, the kind of place where ghosts of old songs and older grudges might linger. It is also, quite literally, home to Edgar, a curmudgeonly Vietnam vet and self-appointed steward of the local “pickin’ parties”—or “wingdings,” “shindigs,” or “hootenannys,” depending on the dialectical detour the script chooses in any given moment. Edgar, played with gravitas and palpable warmth by David M. Lutken, is a man of music, memory, and maddening obstinance—a relic, perhaps, but a resonant one.
Into his crumbling sanctuary arrives Mira (the poised, yet still very emotional Tora Nogami Alexander), a woman with a complicated past and an even more complicated reason for suddenly turning up on the doorstep of the grandfather she hasn’t spoken to in almost twenty years. Why she doesn’t immediately greet him with a “Grandpa!” instead of the oddly formal “Edgar Wilson!” is a mystery best left unpondered, though the play clearly wrings some suspense from it.
Mira’s boyfriend Beckett, a musicologist so besotted with his dissertation and the folk roots of America that he can barely complete a sentence without name-dropping obscure musical traditions or making sweeping ethnomusicological pronouncements. Morgan Morse, who plays him, manages to render Beckett both earnest and slightly irritating—which, given the role, may count as a triumph of characterization.
The narrative structure creaks under the weight of family, a family that doesn’t speak to each other. Mira’s grievances against Edgar—his historical racism, his dismissal of her Korean father, his inadequate protection during a childhood trauma—are real. Meanwhile, her tender recollections of Grandma’s cookies and childhood jam sessions on her Grandma’s precious dulcimer seem to crop up and crowd her fiery feelings for her uncommunicative grandfather.
After intermission, the music fades, and the play shifts tone with a lurch—no longer a folk concert with dramatic inflections, but the therapy session disguised as family drama. Characters shout and storm, only to shut down moments later, their emotional about-faces rarely earning their dramatic payoff. One begins to long, not so much for resolution, but for another song. And it is the music that is their true shared space…the gloves come off to caress a bow or a pick.
To the production’s credit, Sherry Stregack Lutken directs with a light touch, resisting the urge to overplay the pathos, and the design team offers lovely assists: John Salutz’s lighting conjures the soft luminescence of a Carolina summer dusk, Grace Jeon’s costumes are comfortable and very much lived-in, and Sun Hee Kil’s sound design preserves the clarity of lyrics while evoking the acoustic intimacy of a front porch jam.
In tandem with all this care and craft, the play’s musical heartbeat is what ultimately leads the dramaturgical stumbles into a sea of poignancy and an opportunity for hearts to open. There is a familiar story here—about generational rifts, musical inheritance, and the stubborn, splintered soul of rural America—and the sharing of the music is an exquisite way to bury a hatchet.
In the end, Edgar’s own words offer the most salient critique: “Ain’t much point in talking about music—the point is to play it.” The Porch on Windy Hill is most alive when it does just that: when words are few and strings are strummed, when old songs tell the truths the script of Life can only gesture toward.
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Review by Tony Marinelli.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on October 9, 2025. All rights reserved.