What? You’ve never heard of Solderville, Colorado? That tiny mining village “on the highest mountain of the highest mountain range in North America?” (according to the program). If you had joined the motley crew of prospectors searching for gold there in 1879, you might never have found it. But take heart: now you’ll get that chance again—only this time you’ll be striking “theatrical gold.”

Billy Baloo, that treasure of a new musical now playing at the  Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, is a theater prospector’s dream. Like their characters, the show’s creators have spent a lifetime developing this musical. Nurtured by MJ Bruder-Munafo, the Playhouse’s Artistic Director, it was a labor of love on the part of Michael Mason, who had been working on the show for decades with his composer-songwriter-partner Jemima James, rewriting, revising, and paring it down (it once featured 30 characters and seven locations). After Michael’s death in February 2023, Munafo asked his family if they’d like to continue working on the play—whereupon Jemima James and their sons Willy and Sam Mason jumped at the opportunity. Billy Baloo opened at the Playhouse in October 2023 and has been triumphantly remounted again this August, starring Willy Mason in the title role, with projections by his brother Sam. 

The play’s subtitle, “A Musical Tale of Love, Gold, and Beavers,” sets the saucy tone for its hybrid genre. A tongue-in-cheek, mountain-western with a hillbilly/vaudevillian touch (set in 1879), it features characters you’ll fall in love with, particularly the motley trio of old geezers who introduce the play and serve as its narrators. Essentially, Solderville is a mythical mountain town that has seen better days. The down-on-their-luck geezers have been mining for gold there unsuccessfully for decades. The action picks up when Ada, daughter of the deceased manager of the town’s general store called “Perfection,” returns from school in Boston to Solderville to breathe new life into her mother’s failing enterprise. It’s a challenge, since her consumers are miners on the mountain, and supplies need to be carried to them.

Ultimately, Ada enlists Billy Baloo, a local “drifter,” to do the job. Billy (Willy Mason, the playwright’s son) has “connections” with the local beavers who build “stairs” on the mountain so that he’s able to transport the goods by water. Ada’s shop flourishes. But then a big mining company enters, declaring that there is silver to be found on the mountain, not gold. The company’s plan to take over the town and build a railroad disrupts the tiny community’s fierce autonomy. In the end, Billy and the beavers save the day—but that’s the fun of Act Two, and yours to discover.

The cast is uniformly stellar. You’ll be captivated by the three geezers—Joe Casey as Mil, Paul Munafo as Lee, and Jonathan Lipnick as Doug. Together, they open the show with a song appropriately called “Rocks.” It sets the playful tone for the many delightful numbers to follow, which they sing in pitch-perfect harmony, “barbershop-trio style.” Jessie Pinnick is a lovely Ada, and her budding romance with Billy Baloo (played by Willy Mason as bashful and winsome) is sweet and tender. 

In the spirit of fun that is this musical’s signature, Act Two features the surprise entrance of two new characters: Laura Lindsay (Michaela Brown), a sultry saloon singer; and a new prospector named Kevin Kelly, a sensational Irish tenor played by the fabulous Michael Jennings Mahoney, who brings down the house with “Praties,” a musical number about Irish potatoes. (He holds a high note for at least a minute, to the audience‘s amazement.) His final number “Speak Silent Stones” is both melodramatic and vocally acrobatic with its triple-octave range. 

One of my favorite numbers is “Only Mama Knows,” when the geezer trio responds to Ada’s question about her missing father’s identity with a clue that it might be one of them (or anyone else in the town). “Only Mama knows what Mama knows/If Mama knows at all/Well only heaven knows!” they croon. 

You’ll be charmed by this musical gem for its originality and its exuberance. It is expertly directed by MJ Munafo, who deserves credit for bringing a show to life that has been decades in the making. Her direction of a penultimate scene, where the entire cast rides Humbug Creek while watching the collapsing bridge (the beavers eat it), is a show-stopper. The delightful three-part set is designed by Mac Young, with Sam Mason (the playwright’s son) offering terrific projections of the tumbling Humbug Creek that runs through Solderville. A superb onstage trio of musicians (Bill Peek on piano and guitar, Paul Woodiel on fiddle and mandolin, and Nathan Varga on bass) delivers this delightful musical—one that also boasts a feel-good theme of community triumphing over the corporation. 

It’s a “Rocky Mountain High” in the theater.