'Ring of Fire' is a smiley-face disservice to Johnny Cash

Imagine that two decades from now, some Broadway producer penning a jukebox musical about the music of Nirvana used Kurt Cobain's songs to depict a happy family life in the Pacific Northwest.

That approach would be no less an insult to Nirvana fans than Ring of Fire, William Meade and Richard Maltby's show now playing at People's Light, is to the oeuvre of Johnny Cash. The show doesn't so much sanitize Cash's music as bastardize it.

Maltby and Meade's concept employs three couples, one young (Nyssa Duchow and Sam Sherwood), one middle-aged (Deb Lyons and David M. Lutken), one senior (Helen Jean Russell and Neil Friedman). The sextet sketches out biographical strokes of Cash's life in vaudevillian vignettes titled "Beginnings," "Prison," and "Back Home." But while it invokes the locales and themes of Cash's story, it transforms 38 of his hits into a wholesome depiction of good Christian family life that spans three generations on stage.

Take "Cry, Cry, Cry," Cash's first hit. Lyons turns a spite-filled song of sour grapes into a winking, almost friendly little ditty. "I Still Miss Someone" receives a subtler, more punishing rendition; under Gregory Scott Miller's side-stage spotlight, Duchow's nasal voice reminds one more of Éponine from Les Misérables than a heartfelt country balladeer.

Lutken, who gave an inspiring performance last season as Woody Guthrie, performs the sarcastic worldliness of "I've Been Everywhere" (which Cash covered) with a dog's grin.

Not every song fails so spectacularly. The hymn "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" works well as a choral number illustrating the strength of family bonds over generations, and the entire cast displays superb musicianship. Lutken plays the spoons, slaps his hands on his thighs, and dazzles on double harmonica; Duchow impresses on piano and violin, and backup performers play a chair like a drum kit and rock acoustic and electric guitars and stand-up basses along with trumpets and banjos.

Hee Haw-style, the show combines country tropes with a shoddy narrative half sincere, half-send-up. If the cast, which doubles as the band, didn't perform the music with such sincerity, I would think they (or the show) set out to ridicule the Man in Black.

"Ring of Fire." Through Aug. 14 at People's Light, 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern. Tickets are $37 to $79. Information: 610-644-3500 or peopleslight.org