Sampwe Tarrant Photo by Russ Roland

Throughout, we see the basis for these words spoken by Old Man (Brent Florendo-Sitwalla-Pum). Bored and angry teenagers (played by Spencer Battiest, Aubee Billie, and Bonale Fambrini) spend their time smoking pot, stealing and selling tribal artifacts, and making plans to run away from abusive or neglectful parents. Another character, Jim Running Crow (Xander Chauncey), suffers from injuries he sustained while serving in Iraq. The tribe's only language immersion school is about to be shut down. And questionable deals are being made to turn over land for oil drilling.

Yet there remains hopeful optimism among others, like Betty Still Smoking (Michelle Rios), who loves nothing better than to organize communal meals or to help plan for the annual Indian Day festivities.

It is the focus of the story on the conflict between despair and hope, as delineated in the book by Lynne Taylor-Corbett (who also directs) and Shaun Taylor-Corbett (who wrote music and lyrics, and who also appears as a central character), that provides a most compelling basis for Distant Thunder. The production itself is greatly enhanced by the incorporation of splendidly costumed and authentically presented traditional dances, coached by Thunderbird American Indian Dancers and Brent Florendo, giving the show a total wow of an opening, centered around Sampwe Tarrant's eye-popping dance performance. If only it continued along those lines throughout, it would make for a thoroughly thrilling theatrical experience.

The show does continue on a high note, at least for a while, by having one of the more engaging characters, Grandma Jingle Dress (Irma-Estel Laguerre), an elder tribal storyteller, address the audience with one of her stories, the one about "Dancing Waters and the night he was taken away from the tribe." This set-up leads us to expect an evening of storytelling, backed up by the dancing and the very effective integration of drumming and traditional songs by Dancing Spirit Family Drum.

Unfortunately, things take a turn into a far more typical kind of theatrical storytelling, accompanied by a far more typical kind of musical interpolation. It is through this approach that we learn about Dancing Waters and how he was taken away by his white mother and raised in Chicago.

Twenty years have passed since that time, and Dancing Waters is now Darrell (Shaun Taylor-Corbett), an attorney who has returned to the tribe in order to sell what he considers to be a great deal to enrich them by brokering an oil drilling arrangement. When he arrives, he is unsure of exactly where he is as he consults his GPS. Grandma Jingle Dress knowingly points out: "Listen carefully. He is about to utter four words that men from the dawn of time have used to defend their honor." And the words indeed come out of his mouth: "I am not lost!"

We quickly come to understand he is, of course, lost, not necessarily geographically, but emotionally and psychologically, torn from his roots and needing to be reconnected. How this all plays out is the plot of Distant Thunder.

And there's where things start to slip away. The plot and presentation of Distant Thunder contain few surprises, and the mostly pop and country-infused score (music and lyrics by Shaun Taylor-Corbett and Chris Wiseman, with additional music and lyrics by Robert Lindsey-Nassif and Michael Moricz) come across as insertions rather than being integral to the narrative; a couple are simply fitted in as diegetic numbers that truly have nothing to do with the story. This overall discordant approach sits in conflict with the most promising opening. We can only imagine how much better the show would be if Grandma Jingle Dress were allowed to continue speaking directly to the audience, with the story being told through narration and traditional music, dance, and language. These are the best elements, but we are not given nearly enough of them.