Being born in the shadow of a family tragedy means you grow up around the scars of the event. For musical theater writer, composer, and lyricist César Alvarez, the event is one they are trying to musicalize while at the same time resist.

It involves unpacking the trauma of their parents, their youth growing up with these emotional wounds, and conflicts with their parents over issues beyond the tragedy.

It’s a massive undertaking that takes a while to find its footing narratively and structurally. It was worth the wait because of both what it is attempting to do and what it achieves, but it might try the audience’s patience a bit to get there.

The tragedy at the center of the show involves an incident from 1979. The KKK along with the American Nazi party (assisted by the local police and FBI) murdered 5 labor activists during an anti-Klan demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The five people murdered were friends of Alvarez’s parents. Most were involved in the Communist Workers Organization which had organized the rally. Alvarez’s parents were not present for the massacre. But they moved back to Greensboro in the wake of the tragedy. Alvarez was born a year later and is named for two of the people killed that day.

In this musical, César Alvarez (played by Anthony Alfaro) is wrestling with a commission to write a musical about the Greensboro 5, the people killed in the massacre: Jim (Jacob Brandt), Bill (Andrew R. Butler), Sandi (Dionne McClain- Freeney), Cesar (Gían Pérez), and Mike (Zack Segel).

To keep things straight I will refer to the character in the musical as César and the artist behind the show as Alvarez.

César is fully aware that writing a musical about Marxists who were trying to destroy capitalism for money is problematic and they don’t even want to do it. But they need the money. Even their parents (Rubén Flores, Barbara Walsh) are skeptical of what they are doing and why.

Because they are kicking and screaming their way through this commission, César can’t figure out how to start the musical. Working alongside an intern, Moss (Jasmine Rafael), they attempt to start it multiple times.

Along the way we learn of César’s realization they are nonbinary as well as the fact that their parents’ brand of Marxism was homophobic.

Ultimately, this tension between queerness and Marxism, César’s fight against capitalism while making a musical under capitalism, and their dialogue with their parents over the past take up as much space as the Greensboro 5 do in the show. And there is a reason for this. The massacre is an event that has shaped Alvarez’s entire life and all these things are intertwined.

So this personal reckoning with the past amidst larger issues is a necessary piece of the puzzle, but it’s a lot to weave together. If there was a musical theater artist who could solve this twisty complexity, I feel like Alvarez is the one. But it’s not the easiest path forward.

The musical eventually resonates but the first act is frustrating. César is throwing a tantrum about not wanting to write the show we are watching in that moment. It’s not particularly funny or fun.

Part of the problem is Alfaro comes off grating in the role and we need to be with them, on their side, for this journey. But the whining, dramatic diva tone Alfaro takes does not help.

You want a strong hand on this kind of metatheatrical self-reflection, but the show is all over the place. No matter the reasons, sitting through a lot of “César doesn’t want to write this show” is a big ask of the audience.

That is coupled with the challenge of the staged “false starts” to the musical. They are messy and mushy and not in the “we planned this and our failure is the point” but in a “where are we going” kind of way.

First there is kind of a “we’re putting on a show” vibe that falls flat. Then even though César does not want to be doing documentary theater that’s the next approach.

Documentary theater is slightly more legible. But director Sarah Benson just doesn’t give us a visual language or understanding of how we are to read these scenes so it all comes off as awkward and confusing. The production does not feel committed to any of this because it is not. But then it comes off like needless vamping.

Finally after the show resolves its own internal self-resistance, there is a summoning and through a ritual, César and Moss bring the ghosts of the Greensboro 5 to the stage. At this point, the show starts to connect to its purpose.

We need the voices of these activists and their story as counterbalance to César’s personal struggles.  One helps untangle the other. César’s dialogue with the ghosts is refreshing because there is the push and pull that did not exist in the first act where César is left to wrestle with themself alone (or talk with Moss who ends up being more device than character).

On stage, the space is divided between César’s home with a brightly color furniture and their parents home where we get a glimpse of a suburban kitchen. At the back of the stage sit the musicians, some of whom suddenly step forward and are characters in the story.

The blue walls of the stage are spattered with orange paint and at times this is meant to glow in the dark. And maybe it is supposed to conjure a kind of imaginative beyond where they ghosts can commune, but it unfortunately has the same nebulous feeling as the first act. And close followers of my writing know I love a communicative theater wall. This was not one of them.

With respect to the cast, Brandt, Pérez, Segel, McClain-Freeney and the perennially fantastic Butler give immediate specificity to their characters. You can imagine them as longtime friends and warriors in a long running political war. There was a reason that the minute the storytelling was in their hands something just clicked.

It’s been a decade since I saw Alvarez’s musical Futurity but their songs are unexpected, genre-defying, and experimental in the best ways and here they are full of searching, longing, and tasty friction.

Alvarez’s lyrics are like elaborate poems about identity, grief, discovery, protest, parenting, and love. You never know where they will end up.

In a song about desire, César howls, “I need a sword made of rainbow light to cut the melon.”

When thinking about the survivors in the aftermath of death, César asks, “What do you do with an anvil? What do you do when you have to take it into town.”

In a song of summoning César sings, “There is a trap door on the floor of my need for things and it opens onto oneness.”

Mom sings plaintively, “There is a little boy and the ideas that imprison her, turn up the sound of the air conditioner.”

I really liked that the dialogue and lyrics were projected on the walls during the show. As someone who struggles to process music aurally, having the text really helped me connect to the songs.

And what songs they are! They summons ghosts, heal rifts, scream from the soul, and open up the door to forgiveness.

And the second act is chock full of these emotional catharsis moments. They creep up on you and you realize Alvarez has woven the fabric tighter between all the ideas in the show.

Suddenly struggle, whether in politics or gender, collapses into one space. The meaning of martyrdom and questions of praxis come to the fore. “Which side are you on” takes on so many possible meanings in this moment and in this show. And the ghosts are funny, frustrated, disappointed, and hopeful.

While I was grumpy about how the show starts off, I have no complaints about where it ends up taking us. It is heartbreaking and beautiful as it finds a window into the pain of loss and stirs up righteous anger.

But most of all it understands the complexity of survival and resistance and puts that into song.

I am better for having met these people and there is a reason to summon them to us today.