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EYE ON EUROPE |
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THE MUSICAL
At right, artist's rendition of the sign at the real-life cafe in the U.S. |
Odd German cult film
works fine as a musical
of TheColumnists.com
I’m sorry, but I find live theater hard to take. Same goes for musicals only more so. On the rare occasions when I give in and buy a ticket, I usually regret it unless I know someone in the cast. The seats are torture, you can’t talk out loud, and showtime is approaching bedtime. Worse, John Updike’s quip always springs to mind--that the greasepaint and endless repetition of the same lines night after night by the same people is more than he can ignore.
Once in a while I make an exception, and the musical of “Bagdad Café” is such a case. This stage version of the cult film is now touring Europe in tryout and it came to Bordeaux last weekend after a string of sellout performances in Paris and Lyons. It had already done Spain and Germany.
Experts in musicals tell me it’s unusual if not unique for a stage production to start in Europe, and only after fixing all the wrinkles over here it goes to Broadway.
To declare my prejudice up front, I admit that I have a weakness for the 1987 movie version of this story. I have seen it four or five times and always get sucked in by its music, its meandering storyline and its weird characters. The Bordeaux performance was all the more touching because Jack Palance--cast in the film as a romantic former Hollywood scenery painter turned artist--had died the day before.
The movie has become a cult classic in Europe. More than 2.3 million admissions have been sold in France alone and it still comes around every few months on cable. The Germans love it, in part because the movie starred Marianne Sagebrecht, playing a large Bavarian gal who has walked away from her husband after an argument as they drove across the California desert. Adding to the weirdness, she accidentally grabbed his suitcase and so ended up arriving at the Bagdad Café motel on foot with nothing but men’s clothes. Everything else flows from this somewhat contrived situation.
The musical deftly transposes the story
with the required balance of dialogue, song and dance. As in
the film, the German wanderer, played on stage by a portly Sissy
Staudinger, faces down the suspicious motel keeper, takes up
residence in one of the seedy bedrooms, and eventually wins the
hearts of the strange café motel crowd. In a subtheme,
she accidentally lets her tourist visa expire and is caught waitressing
illegally in the café. Nearly deported, she is saved by
a timid marriage proposal by the Hollywood painter (the Palance
role) played here by songwriter and sometime actor John Margolis.
One of the biggest delights is sheriff Arnie, now played by Chinese
American Xiao Mei, a truly brilliant singer sure to be on his
way to more prominent roles.
Director of the film was Percy Aldon, a German, and he finally
managed to reshape this impossible story into a stage production,
engaging many of the original team, now 19 years older. Bob Telson,
who is travelling with the show and was in the pit in Bordeaux,
wrote the music, including “Calling You.” This theme
tune, sung by Jevetta Steele, beautifully evokes the isolation
of the California Mojave desert where the story takes place.
Who would guess that Telson was actually calling an old girlfriend
in Vienna when he wrote that song?
Aldon kept his production team intact from
the movie. Four years ago he made a round of calls to line producer
Dolores Fabry, artistic director Brent Amadeus Capra, Ms. Steele
and Telson. They all cleared their schedules and went to work
on the screen-to-stage adaptation. Only Ms. Steele hesitated
because she was being asked to take on the Brenda role. “I
don’t know about transferring it to a play,” she recalls
saying to Aldon. “So Percy said, ‘But I know’,
and I just went along with that.”
Jevetta is a powerful singer and plays Brenda with black brio,
stomping around the stage and yelling insults at the innocent
German intruder for trying to spy on the way black people live.
Telson has written 12 new songs for the musical version, probably three too many and a likely place for tightening up this somewhat loosey-goosey production before it hits the U.S.
The looseness has its own charm, however. The young cast of dancers and singers seem just undisciplined enough to be fresh but this quality will probably have to go as the show is fine-tuned. Choreographer Bianca Li lets the dancers show their individual talents. The energy in this show comes from the merging of great music and non-stop dancing.
The Bordeaux audience seemed willing to accept the show as is, giving the cast a long standing ovation, including a special round for Telson when he stepped into view from below.
©2006 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted Nov. 20, 2006.
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