Reviews + Awards
In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand – A Brilliant Ballad of the Spiritually Blinded
June 11, 2024 | Los Angeles
By Ernest Kearney, The TVolution
The dark wooden canopy of the Appalachia Valley, known as The Great Valley, shrouds a deep and massive scar that cuts across the eastern landscape of America. As the titular character In Some Dark Valley: The Testament of Reverend Brand, Writer/Performer Robert Bailey succeeds from his first moment on stage in capturing that unknown terror which the vastness of wilderness has held for humanity from Oedipus and Dante to Dorothy and The Evil Dead.
Man’s ability to have unwavering faith in what is beyond his senses to affirm is one of life’s great mysteries. Another is his capacity to lose that faith. There are echoes of this in the story Robert Bailey shares with his audience; that of a man confident of the divinity within himself who is then destroyed by that deception.
Bailey commands the elongated stage of the Madnani masterfully, with a robust physical presence while he envelopes the theatai in the essence of postbellum America through his sincere singing of hymns from the period.
What most impressed me about In Some Dark Valley was how Bailey, through the enfolding of his language, succeeded in conveying the preeminence of the spoken word held in the nineteenth century.
It is hard for our modern sensibilities to perceive the power that words once possessed. Language has been weakened today by our visualization of it. There are few places in the twenty-first century where one can walk without being awashed in the representations of words; digital billboards, towering print advertisements, flashing neon signs, and typographical logos converting words into art.
In the nineteenth century, words had power through their purity and their potency was undiluted. The demarcation point for this change can be found in the comparison of two short turns of phrases; Today, we go “to see a play.” But, from the time of the ancient Greek stage until only the last century, theatergoers went to “hear a play.”
Bailey captures the period’s respect for language through his characters’ usage. They choose their words carefully to communicate their thoughts with clarity; as when Agnes, the Reverend’s young wife, seeks to warn her husband of his faltering faith, “You bruise where you oughta caress.”
Or when Brand realizes what his failure to live his belief has brought him to, “a loneliness so deep it didn’t have no depth.”
As directed by Billy Siegenfeld and produced by Cori Allison, Robert Bailey’s In Some Dark Valley: The Testament of Reverend Brand has but one flaw that I could see; it was limited to only three performances thus denying more Fringe audiences the opportunity of experiencing this exceptional and exquisite work.
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Robert Bailey's "In Some Dark Valley" an Appalachian Story Spellbinder
June 11, 2024 | Los Angeles
by Dan Ruth, LA Hidden Gems
We tend to think that the darkness of the American Civil War took place hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and that it exists in a place far, far away in a corner of our history that cannot be touched. In reality, it ended only 159 years ago and the consequences and repercussions from the war are still felt today. There is a genre of theatre and I suppose storytelling, which relies on these spans of time to weave and spin haunting tales of a time before our time, when stories were handed down through generations.
Robert Bailey has created such a story, a story that contains no trace of today’s modern built world, where the only water around was in the river or creek that runs by the village, when messages were sent by horseback and protection for your village and the people that surrounded you was in the hands of God and the elements. In the tradition of theatre such as “The Diviners” by Jim Leonard Jr. and Romulus Linney’s “Holy Ghosts,” Robert Bailey steps out of that tradition with his finely crafted In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand, which is playing at The Madnani Theatre, as part of The Hollywood Fringe.
Bailey’s creation of Reverend Brand is a fiery post-Civil War roaming circuit preacher, who has visitations and sees signs in nature; a man who is much more human than holy. As a young boy and a product of backwoods Appalachian life, he sees people as they are. He befriends Ludie, an African American woman and her two small boys, only to return one day to find their entire house burnt to the ground and the three of them gone forever. Life in the holler challenges young Reverend Brand on every level, both spiritual and physical.
Later in his life, he is the only man in his village to go down river to save the life of a dying man. This act of bravery causes the villagers to want to keep him as their preacher, but when Reverend Brand uses money from his wealthy deceased mother to rebuild the village church, he is rebuked when he allows black folk into the congregation. Darkness and specters follow the preacher throughout his life. As he loses both his wife and his child to disease, he relies on the humanity of circumstances to make sense of this cruel, confusing world, buried deep in the holler. Ultimately, it’s the Reverend who must question what is right. He sees that the church is hollow, and that man, God, and death, are all part of the much larger, natural world, and that no one, not even a man of God can save themselves.
In Some Dark Valley truly is delightfully dark but there is also humor and outstanding storytelling through finely etched characters. Using not only spoken word, but songs and the haunting sounds of a French harp as well, Robert Bailey’s In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand is a powerful and highly entertaining show that takes full advantage of the lights and a full sound design to draw you into its musty, backwoods world. Directed by Billy Siegenfeld.