JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS
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That’s because Brel had a knack, rare among nontheater songwriters, for creating very specific stories and characters while addressing universal issues. Like Bob Dylan at his best (in Blood on the Tracks), Brel wrote brief but intense musical dramas. His protagonists’ charisma, the result mainly of the potent melodies he gave them, often ran head-on into their frailties and failures. When Brel’s songs are sung by performers who can communicate both their throbbing musical power and their dramatic complexity, they make for gripping theater.
Happily that’s the case in the revival of Eric Blau and Mort Shuman’s Brel-based revue running in the Ruggles Cabaret at the Royal George Theatre Center. Directed by Pat Victor and choreographed by Ken Ward, this strongly cast four-person show emphasizes the material’s theatricality by turning almost every song into a fully staged vignette and encouraging the singers to create distinct characterizations in each number. This may bother listeners used to cabaret shows in which the singers just stand and sing. But to this viewer, Victor and Ward’s approach highlights Brel’s wide-ranging vision of life, the better to underscore a recurring theme: the vain efforts we make to deny our mortality, clinging to illusory values like patriotism, wealth, success, sexual independence, and proper male or female behavior.
