The Reckoning

Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show.

- Hilton Als

“Charisma” has its origin in a Greek word for a favor or a gift, and after seeing “Springsteen on Broadway,” Bruce Springsteen’s new solo show (at the Walter Kerr), I felt I understood the term more clearly. Or less complicatedly. For years before I saw this production—it’s a substantial one, about two hours, without intermission—I dragged my heels when it came to appreciating Springsteen’s gifts. In the eighties, for example, when I looked at that rabble-rouser’s tousled black hair, his bandanna, and his long face and prominent jaw, I saw nothing but danger signals; mostly, they had to do with race and class. First of all, he was from New Jersey, a state with a history of racial division, where some schools were segregated well into the forties. Then there was his accent, which sounded not Northeastern but Midwestern, as if he found that particular tone more authentic or American. By cultivating that intonation, was he expressing nostalgia for the kind of broken-cowboy-turned mechanic blue-collar whiteness that he celebrated in his butch persona, his arms raised in triumph from a workingman’s sleeveless denim jacket?