Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

How do you pass up a poster like that?

Although we’ve recently had pretty good luck, we were reminded last night that things do sell out in this town… We sat in the Hooker-Dunham lobby until the very last minute waiting for one party to not show up, and we ended up taking the last two seats, not together.

The show played out as more or less a concert of Brel’s hits, all translated into English, and occasionally updated with current references. The eight performers all took turns singing solo and together, accompanied by an electric piano.

Brel’s songs have a sad clown vibe… The lyrics are often devastating, reminding us that we will surely die, but not before being rejected, betrayed, and disappointed. But the music tends toward the circusy, darkly whimsical. In the best hands, it’s killer stuff.

It seems like we could use more Jacques Brel’s today: who’s telling these literate, soulful stories in our world today? There are hints of his kind of thing all over the place, from Adele to Amy Winehouse to Billy Joel to Elvis Costello. Somehow I kept thinking of Carol Burnett, who could put on a seriously introspective show until she felt compelled to add a pie in the face. But who fills this void in today’s world, singing simply and eloquently about how much it all hurts? Maybe it’s Kanye, but his pain isn’t mine enough for me to know.

Even in these local, amateur hands, a lot of the material hit me… Each song was a too-hard cuff on the shoulder, a missed step off a curb, an ignored chance to give the poor guy a couple of bucks. The performances and the performers both were lumpy, and the production showed all the challenges of mounting a show with no real budget. But I knew they meant it… their voices broke with real tears several times, and they kept singing. Every bad costume choice and not-right hairstyle reminded me that these local folks were putting it all out there, even more naked and vulnerable for the self-knowing that they weren’t even close to perfect and never could be. In the end, the words and the sheer intensity won out over the acoustics and the wobbly sustains and the awkward transitions from high register to low.

Probably the show went on too long, and probably the surprising interludes of theatrical scenes (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Of Mice and Men, and so on) could have been stitched in more adroitly. I missed the French, and I missed Brel’s nicotine caramel voice. Still and all, my Hooker-Dunham track record of unique and powerful and unexpected performances remains unbroken, and my faith in lumpy, angsty, earnest Brattleboro is affirmed.