Bernie Tiede was an assistant funeral director in his mid-30s in tiny Carthage, Texas. He was well liked for his warm, sympathetic manner with bereaved families. He lent his tenor voice to local choirs and unstinting enthusiasm to community theater. He listened to his neighbors’ troubles.
He was especially close with the wealthy 81-year-old widow Marjorie Nugent. In the early 1990s, Tiede became Nugent’s assistant and companion. Though she was considered stand-offish and rude by some, Nugent gave Tiede lavish gifts, then access to her millions, making him her heir. In 1996, Nugent’s body was found in her freezer. Investigators judged it had been there nine months.
Tiede confessed to killing her, saying Nugent had become cruel and demanding. In 1999, he was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting her four times with a rifle. This sensational small-town murder has been fodder for true-crime TV shows and podcasts, and director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) turned the story into Bernie, a 2011 movie starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine.
Now, the case has become an absorbing, provocative, and unexpectedly moving and funny musical, with book, music, and lyrics by Kevin Fogarty. His Southern Harmony: A Murder Ballad had its world premiere at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater on Aug. 8. The show will run through Sept. 6.
The premise is revealed in the show’s opening ensemble number, in which the townspeople note that, in this version, “the story really happened, but God knows what is true.” The reclusive Nugent is dead, and only Tiede’s side of the tale has ever been available, along with the community’s praise for him. Fogarty makes the townspeople a large part of the story and seems sympathetic to Tiede and his generous nature before and after getting Nugent’s money.
The 130-minute show is set in Texas, but only a few of the score’s 15 songs have a country, bluegrass, or gospel flavor. The rest are contemporary musical theater style, with cleverly complex lyrics, sometimes soaring melodies, and stirring group numbers. Setting the tone is Tiede’s upbeat musical declaration that “you have to be a people person,” whether that means as a mortician readying a corpse or a neighbor savoring small-town life.
Sam Scalamoni’s skillful direction and musical staging creates a fast-moving, engaging air of folksy storytelling by an outstanding cast — both in vocals and characterization — led by Todd Buonopane’s likable, cheerful Tiede. You know he’ll become a killer, yet Buonopane wins you over with Tiede’s nerdy friendliness and quiet introspection. His disbelieving musical question, “Is This My Life?,” reflects first his good fortune as Nugent’s international travel companion, then his prison confinement. Was his murdering Nugent premeditated? Or did he snap from abuse by Nugent and in his childhood? Fogarty raises these questions, and Buonopane keeps the audience unsure of the answers.
As Nugent, Emmanuelle Zeesman, too, creates a layered puzzle with an imperious, sarcastic manner tempered by a halting gait and moments of vulnerability and fear. The suspicious, sour widow haunts and badgers Tiede in life and as a ghostly after-death presence, but Zeesman also gives Nugent a softness and uncertainty that adds to the tragedy. “There’s so much more to the story,” she laments at one point, also observing that Tiede is “someone who is friends with everyone, and so lonely.”
Fogarty says he learned about the Texas murder a decade ago when searching for a real-life topic for a musical theater project and later workshopped the musical with Scalamoni, who recommended the show to WHAT. “The characters and their personalities were so big that I immediately heard them singing,” Fogarty says. His score, beautifully realized by music director and pianist Nevada Lozano, satisfyingly splits focus between the Tiede-Nugent relationship and people in the surrounding community.
It’s the townspeople who provide both background and a lighter tone: “He laid a lot of loved ones in the ground, and one in the deep freeze,” they sing. The five engaging ensemble members play multiple roles, particularly residents who seem like hard workers just trying to earn a living, get along with neighbors, and fulfill their kids’ dreams. Marie Lemon’s chatty, many-times-married Loretta contributes much of the humor with her phrasing and oversharing. They all become witnesses when Ralph Prentice Daniel’s rough-edged D.A. investigates the Nugent murder, then share a rollicking Act Two number debating justice and Tiede’s guilt.
The Texas flavor is clear in Carol Sherry’s evocative costumes and scenic design by Christopher Ostrom, WHAT’s producing artistic director. He creates a room of wooden walls and beams reminiscent of a country bar or store, with its backdrop decorated by a giant Texas state silhouette and battered metal signs. Sitting in a weathered truck bed is Lozano’s four-person band, with Lozano on piano, Jo Miller on violin, Robert Bekkers on guitar and banjo, and Chris Cerreto on percussion. With help from Patricia M. Nichols’s lighting, the cast deftly changes scene locations by moving wooden crates and barrels into different arrangements. In a darkly humorous touch, Ostrom adds an old-fashioned Coca-Cola chest freezer, which is unsettlingly used for many different purposes, including as a casket.
Fogarty worked closely with directors and cast at WHAT rehearsals, making changes, including, Ostrom told the first-preview audience, new script pages that day. More changes were expected before the official opening, he said, and one has to wonder if the tweaking might have involved Act Two. At the first preview, though the first act confidently explored the town, relationships, murder, and conviction, the post-intermission scenes seemed not as strong — Tiede was largely in jail, mulling his situation; Nugent’s ghost looked back on her life; the townspeople discussed Tiede’s guilt and their lives after his conviction.
The show ended with Tiede’s temporary release in 2014 due to his alleged childhood abuse and didn’t depict his 2016 retrial at all. At that preview, at least, viewers were left to seek their own answers to the question of Tiede’s fate.
Murder, They Sang
The event: Southern Harmony: A Murder Ballad with book, music, and lyrics by Kevin Fogarty
The time: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m., through Sept. 6
The place: Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, 2357 Rt. 6
The cost: $18 to $79 at what.org
