Word: brel
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...fulfills as totally as possible his vision of Brel as a cabaret piece with its type of audience involvement. "I feel I'm inviting the audience to see it. I can't see charging people for anything that's not perfect." This translates into a multitude of minor amenities like vacuuming the floor before the show and ultimately into the overall production...
...THINK of Brel as a celebration of life--as it is. There's an amazing coherence in the show. The characterization is pretty much evident in the script. There's a division between the introspective and the outgoing. It's always song-countersong: Curt sings about marriage, I sing of brothels; Paula sings 'Timid Frieda' while Patty sings 'My Death.' It's really twenty-six scenes, not just songs. It works as theater because it limits drama to a minimum, cutting out the extraneous. It gets down to a core...
...song has to have a center, has to build to something. Each presents a coherent idea that has to have coherent blocking. I think of blocking this show, not choreographing it. The challenge is to stage both the characterization and the song. It means getting inside the songs: sometimes Brel says the song should end at the front of the stage. You have to listen for those things...
...beefed up the sound to make the music an equal part. Brel says he's not a poet, the verse has to come with the music floating about. We've got ten instruments instead of four. We'll have a trumpet, too, if they send the music. We wanted the band to change color with the pieces, as Brel does; with just piano, guitar, bass, and drums it would all be the same...
...Brel says some pretty hard things. You know. 'There are truths you've never told.' His truths are real, not theatrical. Brel's philosophy is if we only have love we can get it together--maybe. I played 'Amsterdam' for a good friend of mine; he was a merchant marine. When this guy gets misty-eyed, it's a real tribute to Brel (and to him, too). We're feeding and wining our audience, then singing to them about how the middle class gets fat and gets drunk. It's only half-serious, but it's half-serious...