Jacques Brel at Stratford, Ontario

Sean Pinchin does blues at the Boar's Head, Stratford.

The Stratford, Ontario 2010 production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is a hip cabaret of a musical and a roaring success. As usual with this play, there is no story, there are no songs bursting absurdly from women at the meat market or men at the docks or grandfathers sitting on the toilet. As it should be in all shows where music is the focus, Jacques Brel is one compelling song after another, freed from the syrup of some far-fetched narrative.

From aggressive, raw portraits like “Port of Amsterdam” to lighter, zippy tunes like “Madeliene” to touching ballads like “Timid Frieda,” Brel’s range is terrific. If you don't love each song, you will at least admit you're never bored as he fits often complex lyrics to unconventional, unpredictable music. One reviewer compares Brel to Bob Dylan—different kinds of songs, same kind of musical-poetic genius. I think too of Leonard Cohen as composer or Edith Piaf as chanteuse.

I cannot find YouTube samples that do the songs justice. If the music is OK there, the technology is bad, and vice versa. Brel, singing his own work, is also at YouTube, but I find him overly dramatic. "Composer" and "Singer" are not synonyms (said that damnable New Critic again).

So I’ll just mention that I’ve seen or heard four performances of the play, and Stratford’s four singers and four musicians are the best of the lot by far. From the jazzy, raucous and sometimes comic material to the most moving, melodic ballads, no one can touch the the Stratford group for purity of intent or accuracy of delivery.

In the upbeat comic schticks, the director, singers, and musicians know their bounds. Brel’s comedy has substance and purpose, and the burlesque moments must not obscure that. Still, if there were any toes that didn't tap at all or teeth that didn't grin, they belonged to a few cadavers someone snuck into the building.

You need at least a vague sense of this, so here is Tommy Wallach, a YouTube guy, doing his rollicking version of “Jackie.” Tommy loses control at the end, but you might find his enthusiasm contagious. If it's a bit too long, hang in there for one verse and be sure you hear the refrain:

YouTube - W. #14 - Tommy Wallach - Jackie by Jacques Brel (cover)

If I could be for only an hour
If I could be for an hour every day
If I could be for just one little hour
Cute, cute, cute in a stupid-ass way.

If you won't say that about yourself, I don't trust you.

In slower, more emotional songs like “Fanette,” “Sons of,” “Old Folks,” and “If We Only Have Love,” everything at Stratford is just right—tempo, pitch, mood, choreography, lighting, make-up. The band is especially impressive: one player for guitar and cello, one for violin and accordion, and one each for bass and piano.

From my personal favorite, “Timid Frieda,” here's one YouTube version to give you just a bit of the melody and mood:

YouTube - Ottavia - Les Timides (Brel cover)

Then consider these lines in English about a young woman, maybe the archetypal daughter at 18 or 22, just beginning life in the city. The final three lines in the quotation are a refrain.

Timid Frieda
Won't return now
To the home where
They do not need her,
But always feed her
Little lessons
And platitudes from cans.

She is free now
She will be now
On the street where
The beat's electric.

There she goes
With her valises
Held so tightly in her hands


No tongue stud, no thong, no brassy mouth (though she does try to "take her brave new Fuck You stand"). If this is not a daughter in her idealized vulnerability, maybe she's the first love of many a man, the one he takes home to meet his mama.

If you know nothing of the music in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, you might want to go ahead and sample some more of the flawed YouTube performances. At least you'll see that it's not bluegrass.

In spite of YouTube's damaged goods, one or two clips might coax you into investing in the original CD (circa 1968) with Eric Blau, Mort Shuman, Elly Stone, Shawn Elliot, Alice Whitfield, and Wolfgang Knittel. I think they honor the music better than the 2006 CD directed by Gordon Greenberg and Eric Svejcar, which strikes me as severe. The voices are razor sharp—not kind or wounded, as they need to be in the ballads. Also, some of the instrumentation is intrusive—such as an overpowering bass or some self-consciously long stops: Look at me, look at me. The performers love themselves more than the music, and that's wrong.

But the Stratford, Ontario 2010 production got it right. Here are the artists’ names, for they were stupendous, and this thimbleful of blog recognition is all I can offer in return.

Director: Stafford Arima

Singers: Brent Carver, Robin Hutton (who was excellent as understudy for the ailing Jewelle Blackman), Mike Nadajewski, Nathalie Nadon.

Musicians: Laura Burton, Anna Atkinson, George Meanwell and Luc Michaud

For further information and some shamefully unflattering video of the rehearsals, you might go here:

http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/OnStage/productions.aspx?id=6046&prodid=31480



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