A Musical That's Traveled the World Comes Home to New York

For its cast, "The Gospel at Colonus" is more than just a musical. It's a family — and a spiritual journey.

Mabou Mines developed it in 1983 for BAM's Next Wave festival. Since then, it had a run on Broadway, picked up Tony Award and Pulitzer nominations, and has toured the world: Russia, South Africa, Greece, Scotland. Now it's returned, briefly, and will play for six days this week at the Public Theater's Central Park Delacorte Theater, in a production co-presented by the Public and the Onassis Foundation USA. Like Shakespeare in the Park, tickets are free.

"Gospel" is based on "Oedipus at Colonus," Sophocles' final play, which traces the journey of Oedipus as he's trying to find a peaceful death. Director Lee Breuer, who created the musical with composer Bob Telson, transported an adaptation of the Ancient Greek text to a Pentacostal worship service. He thought that the Greek play structure, with its chorus, was similar to the call-and-response worship of the black church, with its choir.

It shoudn't work — and yet it does. The original gospel, blues and R&B songs, sung by legends like The Blind Boys of Alabama and the Soul Stirrers, inspire goosebumps; the themes — of salvation and redemption — promote reflection.

About 70 percent of the original cast will be in this production, "which is incredible," said Sharon Levy, who's producing it with Dovetail Productions, Inc. "It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen, period — but it really doesn't happen in the American theater. Everybody wants to do it."

That's because the play is a catharis for the actors as well as the audience, said Kevin Davis, who's been in the show since the first production. He says he rearranges his life whenever he receives a phone call telling him there will be another production. "We all have our failings, but we can redeem ourselves. That's what this play is about," he said. "It's medicine."

He said that the play's journey has become something the cast has taken together over three decades, and it has lead to a deep closeness. "Walking into that rehearsal space, it's just hugs all around and smiles all around. We've just been so fortunate to be together as a family, looking out for one another," he said. "It's a joy."