JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL..., Actors' Summit, Directed by Neil Thackaberry

May. 16, 2002

Songs sung to sellouts
Actors' Summit's `Jacques Brel' good fun, brings 'em in
Kerry Clawson
Beacon Journal

If three straight nights of sold-out performances are any indication, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well at Actors' Summit in Hudson.
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, a late 1960s-early 1970s phenomenon celebrating the music of Belgian poet/troubadour Jacques Brel, is an important part of Northeast Ohio theater history.
The revue ran 522 performances from 1973-1975 in the State Theatre lobby in Cleveland, spurring the Playhouse Square theater district renaissance. A total of 125,000 people saw that production.
The original show opened in Greenwich Village in 1967, eight years after producer-translator Eric Blau discovered Brel's poetry and music. By then, the singer was a star in Paris but few Americans were familiar with him.
Actors' Summit Director Neil Thackaberry has long been fascinated by this revue because each of its 26 songs tells a story. Those stories range from the life of a hard-drinking sailor to a young man's experience getting stood up by the girl he loves.
Brel's songs have been sung by everyone from David Bowie to Barry Manilow to Julio Iglesias. But chances are, you haven't heard any of Brel's work until you've heard this revue.
Brel's music ranges from marches to ballads, with most of the stories having an offbeat twist. The songs are funny, irreverent, painful and joyful.
The unifying theme of the revue is love, introduced with the first tune, Marathon.
Brel, who died of lung cancer in 1978, has a sort of cult following. Die-hards wear special Jacques Brel buttons and see the revue every chance they get.
Actors' Summit's performance features singer/actors MaryJo Alexander, Sally Groth, Scott Plate and Wayne Turney. The set has a cabaret feel, with musicians John Franks and W. Scott Sexton playing on a stage with a purple proscenium as the black-clad performers sing on a platform flanked by semicircular steps.
Although these performers are all competent singers, baritone Plate is by far the most accomplished. Some of Alexander and Groth's entrances are ragged in Marathon, while Groth's pitch is flat in Alone. Both are actors first and singers second.
Plate commands our attention in the turmoil-ridden Mathilde, but goes on to make us laugh in the light-hearted Bachelor's Dance, where he interacts with the audience.
Brel's songs are full of irony, with the story often taking an unusual twist at the end. In the amusing Middle Class, Turney and Plate abhor the very thing they've become -- bourgeois.
Turney is an ever-smiling, mischievous presence, even from the perspective of a dead person in Funeral Tango.
He has some witty spoken lines on the subject of men and women, too, including, ``If we leave it to them (women), they will crochet the whole world in the color of goose s--t.''
Later, Turney shows his scathing side in the potent sailor's story, Amsterdam.
In one of the most humorous numbers, Plate and Turney perform The Girls and the Dogs with Thackaberry's West Highland terriers, Alvin Ailey and William Shakespeare. These well-behaved hounds even make a perfect exit offstage.
There's a little something for everyone in this revue. In one of the more emotional numbers, Groth sings Marieke in Flemish.
The finely tuned Carousel is an ensemble show-stopper with its carnival feel, and the revue ends on a note of hope and inspiration with If We Only Have Love.


Musical revue's cast gets it mostly right
05/14/02
Jacqueline Gerber
Special to The Plain Dealer
"Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," currently playing at Actors' Summit in Hudson, is one of those shows that tends to show its age. The revue presents two dozen songs by the Belgian singer, poet and composer who died in 1978. It premiered in New York in the late 1960s, at a time when the Vietnam War, and opposition to it, dominated American society.

Like many shows conceived at that time, "Jacques Brel" reflects a naivete that doesn't always make a comfortable transition to the present. Precious lyrics such as "Talk to the trees and worship the wind" may have a short shelf life in the Age of Enron.
But Brel's subjects - love, anger, friendship and death - are timeless.
Despite some rickety singing and a few thinly drawn characters, the Actors' Summit ensemble - MaryJo Alexander, Sally Groth, Scott Plate and Wayne S. Turney - got it mostly right at Saturday's opening.
Plate provided the best of both worlds. Not only did he act with authority, but he produced compelling characters with his voice.
As the fickle swain in "The Bachelor's Dance," he swept the audience along as he moved from one lass to another.
Narrowing worlds were tenderly illustrated by Alexander in "The Desperate Ones" and "Old Folks." Groth was the sleek ingenue, fanciful in "Carousel," fragile in "Timid Frieda" and effusive in "Marieke," which could have benefited from a translation in the program.

Turney's expansive presence was at its best as the deceased in "Funeral Tango."

The inspirational finale, "If We Only Have Love," suggests that healing comes from selflessness.
For Cleveland audiences, "Jacques Brel" accomplished a loaves-and-fishes miracle in the State Theatre lobby from April 18, 1973, to June 29, 1975. The run of 522 performances, only recently surpassed by "Tony n' Tina's Wedding," focused attention on the Playhouse Square theaters at a crucial time for the city, and kept the wrecking ball at bay.
Gerber is a free-lance writer in Shaker Heights.



© 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.