Sunday, May 30, 2010

Theatre Review: I AM HAMLET, at the Subversive Theatre Collective

I AM HAMLET is part rock opera, part puppet theatre, and part cinema, yet it's still a staged working of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", as told by a jester. In this production, the Danish prince, suspecting his mother and stepfather of murder, struts to a nearby standing microphone and belts out a rock music song just about the time he'd be delivering an anguished soliloquy in a more traditional production.

His unfortunate fiance, Ophelia, clutches flowers and skips merrily across the stage, (picture Porky Pig's girlfriend Petunia at her most coy), and belts out her own righteous babe song as if in answer to Meatloaf's "Paradise By The Dashboard Lights", while gleefully shaking her tush in the direction of her forlorn lover.

Meanwhile, Hamlet's father's ghost appears, cued by spooky sound effects, dressed as if he assaulted the wardrobe rack at a Japanese Noh theatre production, and lip-speaks to a heavily produced taped recording. This bit goes on for some time. Derroch and Dan Death, the gravediggers, are tacky Halloween hand puppets animated by the only actor on stage. This is "Hamlet" performed by a single actor.

It may be true that the word, "ham", an actor who steals the spotlight, is derived from the play's title. In I AM HAMLET we watch an actor's subconscious anxiety while playing the role manipulate every aspect of the play, reducing all around him to insignificance.

Ophelia's father, Polonius, wearing a rubbery grotesque mask, has never before seemed such a genuinely funny character. The once martyred and righteous player is now a buffoon, and his death scene is a hilarious comedy only altered from the traditional play by a funny face.

Ophelia is no longer the delicate flower overpowered with depression, but a dumb blond who jumps into the river to allow Hamlet more freedom on the stage. The ghost, maybe Shakespeare's most towering character, looks as though he could be hosting a third rate children's television show on local TV. Only the Ham himself manages to gnaw the woodwork of earnest and limited acting. He's succeeded in eliminating everyone else from the stage.

The production is not simply played for laughs, although it certainly isn't serious Shakespeare either. Actor/performer Brian Morey and director Joe Siracusa have given us "Hamlet" splattered with a vaudevillian pop art. It may touch upon the profound but cerebral merit is soon swept away by the fine but sparse Broadway-like original music, (picture a small scale Shakespearean "Rent"), sung most exceptionally by Morey, and the sheer audacity of this foolish man delivering "Hamlet" as though his life depended on it.

If it does have meaning it may lie in the dead skull of the jester Yorick, ("Alas, poor Yorick"), who in this production should be grinning like a crazed jack-o-lantern. Morey glides through each scene with a magician's sleight of hand, creating a natural rhythm that eludes the absence of actors on the stage.

His King Claudius is a little heavy on the Peter O'Toole, and the production's "play within a play" jarringly projected on a movie screen and a bit long in the tooth, is such an abrupt change of circus rings you half expect a hot dog vendor to come hawking through the aisle. Still, this first-rate joke is a whole lot better than second rate Shakespeare.

I AM HAMLET plays at the Subversive Theatre Collective at The Manny Fried Playhouse, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through June 5 in Buffalo, New York.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Music Review: Peter Frampton, THANK YOU MR. CHURCHILL






You want to party like it's 1976? Peter Frampton's new album, THANK YOU MR. CHURCHILL, has enough guitar riffs and musical hooks to rival the pleasures of his celebrated FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE album, still the fourth biggest selling live album in America. While CHURCHILL offers a more rocking COMES ALIVE vibe, it doesn't sound like yesterday's clunky 8-track and there's not a talking box to be heard. It's a breezy bit of serious rock and roll in the classic rock vein that fits nicely among the sons of grunge and teeny-bopper kiddie cocktail music that fills today's radio.

Not that you can expect to hear any of it on the radio even as "Invisible Man" from the album is currently the number six single on the classic rock best sellers list, (it takes a satellite radio connection to realize such a list even exists). It's a catchy Motown inspired rocker, think The Four Tops not so much The Temptations, that may lay evidence to what I've always suspected: Frampton is an unaccredited session player on scores of hit records - "I'm pulling the strings in the shadows behind the scenes. I'm keeping the beat, before you know it you'll be on your feet dancing in the street.", he sings invoking the pleasant beat of Smoky Robinson's "Tears Of A Clown".

It's a tight rocker but not as efficient a hit single as the cutesy titled "I'm Due A You", with a 'do-what-you-do-wah-do' lyrical atmosphere underscored by a foreboding darkness with happily infectious guitar riffs. Steely Dan at their most paranoid contemplative moments come to mind - "emotionally overdrawn, the check's in the mail, something is creeping across the lawn, my stalker's out of jail.".

While the title track seems an impersonal and clumsy sentiment, (Frampton claims he is thanking Churchill for ending WWII so his father can return and impregnate his mother, so he may be born, he may as well be thanking the milk man), "Vaudeville Nanna and The Banjole" is a soft spoken reminiscence of his first affair with a crude stringed instrument, a memory that serves as a nuclei to his life, longing for "guitars behind glass that I wanted to play". The seven minutes plus instrumental, "Suite Liberte" combines surf rock lullaby with blues guitar licks in a simple elegant invitation to every fledgling guitarist to pick up your guitar and play along.

Elsewhere the album rides a wave of competent rockers featuring Frampton's fiery and jagged playing, ("Road To The Sun" especially rocks), and testimonial ballads that find him an ever maturing lyricist forever embedded in rock culture.

Peter Frampton, legendary 16 year old guitar player of beloved British blues rock band Humble Pie, proven songwriter and hit maker, seasoned musician and sudden overnight sensation, time weary traveler of the humble concert trail, Grammy award winning composer of the 2007 rock instrumental, FINGERPRINTS, is still punching the clock of the music we love that is rock and roll. So who do you got to blow away on guitar to be inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

in reference to: Music Review: Peter Frampton - Thank You Mr. Churchill - Page 2 - Blogcritics Music (view on Google Sidewiki)