August 21 and 22, 2009
Reviewed by Andrea Braun
Anna Blair has titled her show Inside Story: A Cabaret Celebrating the Lyrics of Fran Landesman, and that is exactly what she does. She's not given to lots of patter (a relief, in some ways, from artists who seem to need to "share" every experience they've had since leaving the womb) and most of it is about her subject. She has a supple, melodic voice, and she looks like she was born to wear a red dress (and proves that redheads needn't avoid that color) and lean against a baby grand. She is sultry, playful, sad, straight-forward, and she provides the audience with an altogether lovely evening.
"Inside Story" is one of the 17 songs, all with lyrics by Landesman, that Blair performs in this brisk 75-minute set. When she performs it, she honors the child inside all of us: "Walk softly, you're walking on my dreams. . . . Everybody is five years old inside." Blair seems to identify with that child. "You can see the little girl who sits behind my eyes watching all night long clutching her glass of fireflies," which is an evocative image of the artist as a dreamy little girl. It is one of the program's finest characterizations.
Blair connects with the audience immediately, and Landesman provides her a fitting way in with the lyrics to "Small Day Tomorrow": "I can stay up late" and "We've got a big night, cause I've got a small day tomorrow." She segues into a patter song, "The Secret of Silence," and she plays up its comedy with her frantic plea, "I wish you would show me the way to be still."
Between "Small Day," and "Music Reaches Places," she gives more details about meeting Landesman last year when she came to St. Louis for a four-night stand of poetry and music which Blair was invited to join. She came to love the salty octogenarian, and apparently the feeling is mutual, as they have developed their friendship through the mail. Late in the evening, Blair showed off a ring, bracelet and scarf, "a bundle from Britain," she had received from Landesman who has lived in London since the 1960s.
But once upon a time, long ago and far away, Fran Landesman and her husband, Jay, lived in St. Louis in a legendary place called "Gaslight Square." There were audience members who remembered it; some of us whose parents frequented it, and younger people who probably knew very little about it. The Landesmans owned The Crystal Palace, a splendid restaurant/cabaret where legends like Streisand, Lenny Bruce, the Smothers Brothers, Phyllis Diller and others performed when they were young. Blair does confine most of her remarks to talking about "Fran," but I'd have liked to have heard more about the St. Louis years for, after all, she does quote Landesman as saying, "There would be no Fran Landesman without Jay." Incidentally, there were members of the Landesman family in the audience, and Blair graciously welcomed them and thanked Landesman's son Cosmo for helping her find some obscure sheet music.
Fran Landesman collaborated on just one musical that has been produced in New York and elsewhere (in St. Louis by New Line Theatre exactly 45 years after it opened at the Crystal Palace) and that is The Nervous Set, based on an unpublished novel by Jay. Blair referred to it as the only musical about the Beats. It concerns a couple much like Fran and Jay, right down to the fact that the man publishes a cutting edge literary magazine ("Nerves" in the show; "Neurotica" in real life) which provided an outlet for the revolutionary writings and philosophy of the "Beat Generation," whose work was highly influential in the 1950s and beyond.
Beat poetry (and poets) influenced Fran Landesman heavily. Her songs could as easily be recited as sung. In lieu of bongos in one number, Blair snaps her fingers (a Beat convention at readings) and invites the audience to join her as she shows her playful side, including some impressive vocal gymnastics, on "Some Boys." Unlike many of her contemporaries (Allen Ginsburg excepted); however, Landesman's lyrics are often oddly encouraging. She gets down, but she gets up, because everybody has "Scars," which could be a companion piece to "Inside Story," in its essential optimism.
Landesman loves wordplay, and sometimes her lyrics are reminiscent of Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin, such as in "In Bed with a Book," the only song I've ever heard with "Stendhal" in it, and the unlikely rhymes in "It's Nice Weather for Ducks." "Unforgivable" is a clever parody of "Unforgettable," and Blair has fun with all the quirks. Many of the melodies are composed by Tommy Wolf, her collaborator on The Nervous Set and musical director at the Crystal Palace who went on to a distinguished, albeit brief, career. Even more are from a younger Welshman, Simon Wallace, with whom she is still actively collaborating. A few others are represented, most notably Ann Hampton Calloway ("I Quite Like Men").
For those who know Landesman's work, it's likely that one of the songs with which they're familiar is "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men," from The Nervous Set, a rueful lament about the young men growing old and the young women who need to keep them from dwelling on it. Blair provides the proper amount of rue. It's hard to tell which came first though: this song or Rod McKuen. A novelty song called "A Brontosaurus Named Bert" is sweet and may be the Ur "Puff, the Magic Dragon."
As cabaret artists sometimes do, Blair lost her way at one point, even checked the sheet music, then rather suddenly was in another song. It was about 2/3 of the way through the show, and it seemed to rattle her. She began to thank people before the "11 o'clock number," Landesman's best-known and frequently covered "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." However, she caught herself and rendered a deeply felt performance of that deceptively simple but vocally challenging song. It requires a strong lower register which seemed to strain Blair a bit.
Carolbeth True was the guest pianist (Joe Dreyer, the musical director will accompany her tonight, Aug. 22) and she was amazing, as always. True is one of the finest pianists in town, perhaps in the country, and she added immeasurably to the pleasure of the evening. Anna Blair has only been performing cabaret for a year or so, and she did a fine job with this show. She clearly loves her material and her subject. As lyricists go, Fran Landesman is more clever than profound, but Blair's deeply felt renditions made the work seem greater than it is, and that's about the highest praise I could give any artist.
Anna Blair's Inside Story: A Cabaret is at 8 p.m. August 21 and 22 at Jazz at the Bistro. Should you see this review in time to catch the Saturday night show, you can get tickets at the door.
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