Word: blau
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...production is a revue of Jacques Brel songs arranged and translated by Eric Blau and Mort Shuman. I'm not sure whether the strength of the lyrics is more properly attributed to their translation or to Brel himself. Perhaps both. A strand of bitterness runs through the songs, and a singer tells us, "Jacques Brel is bitter, but that's because he's in rapport with the world...
Fortunately, the cast's energy and several outstanding principals protect Michael L. Blau's worthwhile producation. Eden Lee Murray does a remarkable job of building the character of Margo Channing even where the script is most bare. A star at the peak of her adult career, she is torn by suspicion and self-doubt, the products of fading youth. What emerges is a sensitive, mature woman equipped with an actress's command of gesture and expression. Murray handles her songs and dance routines with poise and vitality, but more important, never loses a grip on the character she has created...
...prospective secretary, Geraldine Barclay (Susie Fisher). "I wish to see what effect your stepmother's death had upon your legs," he tells her, but his examination is interrupted by his nymphomaniac wife (blatantly portrayed by Deborah Marie Hayes) and one of her pursuers, a bellboy played by Michael Blau...
...faith of a visionary that everything has run as scheduled since kickoff. But as he chronologues his show's history, fate clearly helped those who helped themselves. Simply to get the show was an act of will: "I wrote to 3W Productions who said yes, referring me to Blau and Shuman (who put Brel together) who said yes, referring me to their agent, Music Theatre International, who said no." Guy waited til February, meanwhile casting and then scrapping an all-women production of Waiting for Godot ("another long story"). In February the agency said yes, but backed down ten days...
...carping is to be done about this production it should be directed at Eric Blau and Mort Shuman--who translated the songs and are guilty of "additional material"--or perhaps at Brel himself. Some of the songs--notably "Fanette" and the finale "If We Only Have Love"--are trite and slurpy. The cast was good enough to overwhelm Brel's lack of ideas with its own fire but Blau and Shuman's unfortunate use of the English language is sometimes jarring. (Rochman is obliged to shout that he wants to be "cute, cute, cute, in a stupid...