Theatre in Review: Murder Ballad (Union Square Theatre)Passion is a killer in Murder Ballad, the new pulp-fiction musical that has transferred to Off Broadway following a hit engagement at Manhattan Theatre Club. Sara and Tom, who form two sides of librettist Julia Jordan's triangle, meet, fall in lust, and embark on a too-hot-to-handle love affair. It doesn't last, however, and following an ugly breakup, Sara, on the rebound, ends up with Michael, a gentle professor of poetry. They make it legal, and, to support Sara and their baby daughter, Michael gets an MBA. A few years later, Sara is a desperate housewife, scheduling play dates and feeling imprisoned in her two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. What happens next you can write yourself. Sara runs into Tom and they promptly fall back into bed. A predictable cycle of lust, guilt, and separation repeats itself, as Michael gradually becomes aware that something is up. The suspicions build until a trip to the park with Michael and Sara's daughter becomes the setting for a tense, three-way confrontation between them and Tom. At this point, it's pretty clear that some kind of mayhem is going to take place -- the show is called Murder Ballad, after all -- but one's expectations are upended when the show's narrator abandons her pose of detachment and enters the storyline, leading to a surprise ending that also makes emotional sense. Murder Ballad benefits from Trip Cullman's inventive staging in a radically reconfigured Union Square Theatre. Mark Wendland, the set designer, has scaled back the orchestra seating, adding several rows on stage. Between these two banks of audience seating there is a cabaret setup with table and chairs, plus a long bar and pool table. The actors play out their sordid drama in this middle space, often prowling across the bar top or getting unnervingly close to the paying patrons. The rest of the space is designed to look like an especially grungy downtown watering hole, an impression aided immeasurably by Ben Stanton's lighting, which constantly reshapes the space with saturated color washes, stark beam looks, and chiaroscuro effects. Still, Murder Ballad never really works up the promised atmosphere of steamy suspense. The quote ads outside the theatre tout a "hot-hot-hot" entertainment, but, for most of the running time, Tom, Sara, and Michael mope around, expressing their disaffection through a series of downbeat ballads by Juliana Nash (best known for her work in the band Talking to Animals). The numbers tend to run into each other without much distinction, and there is a surprising absence of strong melodies; at times, it feels like one is listening to 90 minutes of recitative. Also, for all its apparently tough-minded rock-and-roll attitude, Murder Ballad borrows most of its ideas from '40s-era noir movie thrillers and 50's-era paperbacks. The show's success hinges on one's belief that Tom and Sara simply cannot keep their hands off each other, even when it would clearly be in their interest to do so. ("We're like two cats in a fishbowl/we're like two dogs in a boneyard," is Sara's blunt way of putting it.) This fatal love concept is a particularly tough sell in a contemporary context, and, despite thoroughly professional contributions by Will Swenson and Caissie Levy, it comes off as borderline risible. John Ellison Conlee is similarly solid at Michael, but the show belongs to Rebecca Naomi Jones as the narrator. Keeping a sardonic eye on the action, teasing us with various possibilities, and letting her powerful voice loose, she easily dominates the proceedings. Jones has been seen in a variety of roles on and Off Broadway, and if nothing else, Murder Ballad demonstrates that she is more than ready to have a production built around her considerable talents. Other plus factors include Jessica Pabst's casual-wear costumes and Leon Rothenberg's sound design, which manages a strong balance between the voices and band -- this can't have been easy, given the fact that the actors are running all around the theatre. Murder Ballad tries a little too hard to coast on style alone, but somehow this pulp thriller ends up looking more like old-fashioned soap opera. -- David Barbour 
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