Word: brel
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...connection in every seat Take a Hike Destinations to restore your sense of wonder Vietnam's relentless modernization means there are increasingly fewer opportunities to step back into the country's past. But the splendid Café Tung is an exception. With its retro skai-covered sofas and Jacques Brel posters, it looks more like a 1960s Parisian cellar than a coffee shop in the present-day Central Highlands town of Dalat. Not that there are any complaints from the clientele, who comprise a fair slice of Dalat's artists and intellectuals (the town is Vietnam's pre-eminent bohemian...
...Sondheim-as-Jacques-Brel image to which Marry Mc A Little pays homage is among the more limited of these roles, perhaps because it is set so firmly in one particular milieu. The songs that make up this essentially plotless revue about a man and woman--each alone on a Saturday night in the same apartment building--could not possibly refer to any society but that of upper-middle-class singles in Manhattan. There are references to reading the Sunday Times, or Saturday night prowling various bars, putting up with parents and their querulous worries about their kids...
...from one can each of vegetables, meat and dessert, heated on his butane stove and forked out of the can directly to save dishwashing. Jeantot's only hedonistic indulgence was a cassette player, with which he regaled himself with favorites that ranged from Pink Floyd to Jacques Brel to Beethoven's Ninth...
...some individual numbers have full vignettes acted out around them, there's no sense that these people have any ideas about their materials except that they're beautiful or passionate songs. Black turtlenecks and black trousers can't single-handedly evoke the contnent, and no matter how well-wrought Brel's songs are, they could use a little interpretation to carry the evening...
...show like this is a painless way for singers to exercise their talents and for students to spend an evening. As long as Brel and its fellow revues can continue to draw audiences, there's no harm in them. But it's hardly unreasonable to demand more--more thought behind the singing, and more ambition in their choice of material...