The Ballad of Johnny & June – The Alexandra, Birmingham

Book: Des McAnuff and Robert Cary

Director: Des McAnuff

Following its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 2024 and a subsequent Canadian run, The Ballad of Johnny & June arrives in the UK for the first time as part of a major national tour. The show tells the story of country music icons Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash — he the son of a god-fearing Arkansas cotton farmer who regarded music as the devil’s work unless it was church singing, she already a radio star at eleven as part of the celebrated Carter family — from their first meeting at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956 through to their deaths within months of each other in 2003. It is narrated by their son, John Carter Cash, who frames the whole as a fairy tale that, as he notes early on, can get dark.

Robert Brill’s set is a static slatted structure, detailed and suggestive rather than literal — a compressed stage world that can read as a domestic space, a recording studio or a prison cell with minimal rearrangement, an occasional chair the most that’s usually asked of it. It keeps things moving smoothly enough, and there’s nothing here that demands a scene change, but the design adds little beyond utility. The six-piece onstage band, half-hidden behind the set, supports the performances well.

Christopher Ryan Grant, who originated the role in San Diego, brings an authority to Cash that goes beyond surface impression. The physical detail is well-judged — a subtle tremor, a heaviness in the shoulders during the darker passages — and vocally he captures something of Cash’s distinctive baritone without mere impersonation. Christina Bianco’s June is warmer and more nuanced, showing a resilience beneath the warmth that lifts the character considerably. She is also in fine voice throughout. Ryan O’Donnell as John Carter Cash navigates the narrator role with a light touch, bringing moments of welcome levity to a piece that can otherwise be quite intense in tone. The ensemble of six works hard across multiple roles, providing the many additional characters the story calls for — from Patsy Cline to Kris Kristofferson — with commitment and strong close-harmony singing.

The show’s score draws primarily from the Cash-Carter catalogue — I Walk the Line, Ring of Fire, Folsom Prison Blues, Jackson among them — with some material written for the production, including the title song composed by the show’s co-writers Des McAnuff and Robert Cary. Where the new songs appear to fill narrative gaps, they do so in a style that fits well enough, though none quite match the lift that the familiar numbers provide.

Therein lies the main difficulty with the show. When a well-known Cash song arrives, there is an almost palpable shift in the room. The problem is that Cash’s catalogue is not universally known in the way that, say, a Motown songbook might be, and his story — previous marriages, drug dependency, professional peaks and troughs — while absorbing for devotees, covers ground that will feel familiar territory for anyone with a passing knowledge of rock and country biography. The show is also largely static dramatically, which places considerable weight on the storytelling. At its best, that storytelling is engaging, but too often it goes into too much detail. The Carter Family Tree for example, which traces the family’s musical pedigree and performance history is very difficult to follow, threatening to lose the audience at precisely the moment it most needs them.

The closing scenes find genuine poignancy, which makes the sudden lurch back into Ring of Fire before the bows feel jarring — a number that’s barely begun before it ends. A full-throated curtain call sequence might have sent the audience out humming rather than feeling slightly deflated.

For Cash aficionados, there is much to enjoy here. For those coming with only a casual familiarity, it provides an agreeable evening — toe-tapping at times, occasionally moving, though rarely as electrifying as it could be.

Runs until 25 April 2026 and on tour