| |
In a Pig's Valise
Eric Overmyer (Book and Lyrics) &
August Darnell (Music)
June 1989, Broadway Play Publishing ISBN 088145074X
(A musical play, Produced by Center Stage in Baltimore and Second Stage Theater in New York in February, 1989.
Directed and choreographed by Graciela Daniele. Nathan Lane played the role of detective James Taxi in this musical.
Musical direction was by Kid Creole keyboardist Peter Schott and Charlie Lagond played the role of Blind Sax.
Also available in Eric Overmyer's Collected Plays (Plays for Actors) October, 1993 Smith and Kraus ISBN 1880399407) |
|
Linda Winer
Prisoner of Genre
Newsday
Wednesday, February
15, 1989
IN A PIG'S VALISE: A Hard-Boiled Yarn with Music.' Musical
with book and lyrics by Eric Overmyer, music by August Darnell,
directed and choreographed by Graciela Danielle. With Nathan Lane, Ada
Maris, Reg E. Cathey, Charlie Lagond, Michael McCormick, Jonathan
Freeman, Thom Sesma, Lauren Tom, Dian Sorel. Sets by Bob Shaw, costumes
by Jeanne Button, lights by Peggy Eisenhauer, with Kid Creole and the
Coconuts. Second Stage, Broadway at 76th Street, Manhattan.
"IN A PIG'S Valise" has all the promise of a great piece of junk
theater - a goofy, off-beat musical that could scale the tipsy heights
of "Little Shop of Horrors" or "The Rocky Horror Show."
There is a script by Eric Overmyer, the theater's new master of
semantic machinations; music by August Darnell, a.k.a. the Kid in the
quasi-Carib-pop band of Kid Creole and the Coconuts; direction by
Graciela Daniele, who choreographed sublime silliness in "Pirates of
Penzance" and put passion in "Tango Apacionado."
Mysteriously, and unfortunately, the private-eye spoof that opened last
night at Second Stage is a great little junk musical in search of
staging and music. There is much to treasure in Overmyer's glitteringly
wise and foolish "lingo noir" script and in Nathan Lane's performance
as the simile-crazed low-life gumshoe. How enjoyable one finds the
show, however, depends on one's willingness to overlook music that is
uninspired by its lyrics; lame production numbers that are more stupid
than stylish; more than a few queasy slips in the intentionally tacky
tone; and one of the most uneven casts ever put together by this
prestigious theater.
But, first, the good parts. Lane, who
made audiences sit up and say, "Who is that toad?" years ago when he
played a toad in the short-lived "Wind in the Willows," has been
stealing shows ever since. Here, he is James Taxi, a wheezing, bemused
dumpling of a detective in a rumpled Columbo trench, who drinks Kahlua
with Maalox and is obsessed with the mechanisms of Chandleresque
film-noir. Or, as Overmyer has him confide to us, happily standing
aside the plot to "cogitate a capella": "we are all prisoners of
genre."
He's also prisoner of a story set at the Heartbreak
Hotel, corner of Neon and Lonely, where a dish named Dolores Con Leche
(Sorrows with Milk) works as an ethnic folk dancer - Norwegian, Slavic,
South Philly. Dolores, played with just enough Latin bombshell-ism by
Ada Maris, believes someone is stealing her dreams. Taxi, whom she
called when intending to call a cab, sympathizes: "Dreams, the
underwear of the mind . . . too personal to steal."
So far,
so much fun. Taxi explains to Dolores the superiority of similes over
metaphors and why his voiceovers - his VO, not his MO - are necessary
to pass on exposition. Meanwhile, a heady saxophone (played by Charlie
Lagond, the only member of the Creole band who comes down from its
perch to appear onstage) is laying on the atmosphere: "Hard-boiled tip
number one," says Taxi, "Trust your underscoring."
Too soon,
however, we learn we cannot trust the scoring enough. Darnell, an
extraordinarly talented composer who favors '40s mysterioso in his own
style, would seem to have been the perfect match here. But except for
"If I Was a Fool to Dream," the only song not serving as parody, the
numbers are shapeless and repetitive. Whether salsa, funk or jazz, they
never develop or keep up with Overmyer's elevated sense of fun. The
titles are terrific - "Kiss Me Deadly" and, especially the summary,
"Doin' the Denouement," but Darnell does not seem to have hooked into
them. Also, given the innocence of the show, the raunchy "Put Your Legs
on My Shoulders" is a jarring mistake.
Faults are also on
the shoulders of director-choreographer Daniele. Except for the pithy
menace of Bop Op (Reg E. Cathey), the denizens of the Heartbreak are of
fatally variable inspiration. Lauren Tom has spunk and talent as one of
the back-up Balkans; others can sing but not dance, dance but not sing.
This is a problem in a musical.
But, always, there is Taxi,
getting narrative motion sickness from the attempts to connect to the
greater American myth machine. And Overmyer, who makes us fascinated
with his fascination with language, making a silk purse out of a pig's
valise. One can only wish that Second Stage, known for giving failed
plays a second chance, could take a second stab at his.
Copyright 1989 Newsday, Inc.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
STEPHEN HOLDEN
THEATER:
At Heartbreak Hotel, Saxophones and Stolen Dreams
The New York Times
Sunday, February 12, 1989
In the swirling fog at the corner of Neon and Lonely Streets, by the
bar of the Heartbreak Hotel, a ghostly figure in a trenchcoat and
slouch hat steps out under a blue streetlight. Launching into a smoky
jazz-flavored ballad, James Taxi, a pint-size private eye, huskily
drawls out an ode to rain-soaked streets at 2 in the morning, whisky
and shining saxophones.
So begins ''In a Pig's Valise,'' the
new musical theater fantasy, with a book and lyrics by Eric Overmyer,
music by August Darnell, and direction and choreography by Graciela
Daniele, that opens tonight at the Second Stage. What the 37-year-old
playwright (''On the Verge or the Geography of Learning'') and the
38-year-old founder and leader of the pop band Kid Creole and the
Coconuts have created is a show that is so unconventional they have
dubbed it ''a hard-boiled yarn with music'' rather than a musical
comedy.
''In a Pig's Valise'' takes its title from a scene in
Raymond Chandler's novel ''The Little Sister'' in which the enigmatic
phrase is flung as an insulting retort meaning ''not on your life.''
Among the characters who stalk the netherworld of the Heartbreak Hotel
are Dolores Con Leche, a Hispanic temptress who hires the detective to
investigate the disappearance of her kid sister, assorted hotel
denizens with such names as Zoot Alors, Root Choyce, the Bop Op and
Shrimp Bucket, as well as two pouty singer-dancers, Mustang Sally and
Dizzy Miss Lizzy.
As the plot deepens, the detective and his
slinky client discover an outlandish scheme to drug people and steal
their dreams while they're unconscious, then merchandise them as
software for holographic dream machines. The conspirators' prize
possession is the cryogenically frozen body of Walt Disney. The story
swirls together American legends ranging all the way from Disney to
John Dillinger, from Philip Marlowe to Huey Newton, with a giddy,
insouciant playfulness and in a mix of musical genres that include
calypso, funk, pop, cool jazz, country, reggae, hard rock and rap.
The persona of Kid Creole, the sharp-dressing, smooth-talking alter ego
that Mr. Darnell used to impersonate 24 hours a day, fits so easily
into the mythical world of Mr. Overmyer's play that initially there was
talk of his appearing in the show as well as writing the music. Mr.
Darnell resisted.
Like Mr. Overmyer's two other full-length
plays - ''On the Verge'' and ''In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe''
- ,''In a Pig's Valise'' is a bold experiment in language, in this case
the hard-boiled American detective novel.
''Working with
actors, I often have to explain that it's not the same if they
paraphrase or invert a word since that changes the rhythm,'' Mr.
Overmyer said. ''It's the same thing as playing a different note than
what's written in a musical score - it would be wrong. I consciously
think of my pieces as scores without music, except of course that this
one has music.'' Mr. Overmyer's obsession with language is matched by
his interest in genre.
''To me the detective story is one
aspect of American mythology,'' he said. ''It's our version of Greek
legends. We live with a gold mine of American mythology that's all
stuck together. I was drawn to the detective form because it's so
American. The piece is really about American vernacular, both
linguistic and musical. The idea for the piece began with Raymond
Chandler. I've always liked thrillers but especially Chandler's because
of his similes. He was the springboard.''
The play became a
musical almost by accident. While Mr. Overmyer was writing ''In a Pig's
Valise,'' he found what he called ''places for songs.'' Over the last
seven years it has gone through more than 20 drafts, and Mr. Overmyer
has worked with six different composers, none of whom gave him the
musical tone he had in mind.
Mr. Darnell recognized his
kinship with Mr. Overmyer immediately on receiving the play. ''I was
hooked from the first five pages,'' he said. ''Everyone who has seen it
is amazed that someone could have written something so close to what
I'm about.''
''In a Pig's Valise'' is only the second
musical to be produced by the Second Stage, the Upper West Side theater
company whose recent productions of Tina Howe's ''Coastal
Disturbances'' and Michael Weller's ''Spoils of War'' moved to
Broadway. ''Because it's our 10th season, we wanted to do something
special,'' said Robyn Goodman, who co-founded the Second Stage with the
director Carole Rothman. ''After doing William Finn's 'In Trousers' in
1981, we were anxious to do another musical. But because we're known
predominantly for plays, we don't get many musicals sent to us. Then
Eric's script came in, and it was exactly our sense of humor. Eric
still hadn't found the right composer. We asked him, 'If you could have
anybody in the world who would you like? And he said August Darnell.'
''
Because of unforeseen expenses, the show was almost
canceled. The typical Second Stage production costs around $100,000,
but ''In a Pig's Valise'' may end up costing twice that. A $75,000
grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund saved the day.
The teaming of Mr. Overmyer and Mr. Darnell marked the happy end of Mr. Overmyer's nearly eight-year search for a composer.
''In 1981, while writing the first draft of the play, I was listening
to Kid Creole and the Coconuts' music, and was already a big fan,'' Mr.
Overmyer recalled recently in a joint interview with Mr. Darnell. ''I
think I taught myself how to write lyrics by listening to his records.
I remember thinking that the spectrum of genres in his music fit the
characters in the play, but I figured there was no way I would be able
to get August to write the music.''
Considering the
differences in their backgrounds, Mr. Overmyer and Mr. Darnell share an
imaginative kinship that is uncannily twinlike. The play's whimsical
caricatures of zoot-suited tough guys and their sulky molls would not
seem out of place if plunked in the middle of one of Kid Creole and the
Coconuts' concert extravaganzas.
Blond-haired and
soft-spoken, Mr. Overmyer grew up in Seattle, attended Reed College,
and in the late 70's worked as the literary manager for Playwrights
Horizons in New York. For the last several years he has supported
himself by writing for television. Two years ago, ''On the Verge,'' his
first full-length play, won favorable notice when it opened at the John
Houseman Theater. A fable about time traveling, it followed the journey
of three intrepid Victorian women who set out with butterfly nets and
pith helmets to explore the unknown and find themselves caught in a
time warp that propels them inexorably forward into the 1950's.
Last summer, ''In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe,'' his play
depicting right-wing conspiracy and paranoia in New York, played
briefly at the Hudson Guild. Both plays are obsessed with language, the
first with lush linguistic Victoriana, the second with minimalist
Orwellian newspeak.
Mr. Darnell, whose father was of Haitian
descent and whose mother was French Canadian, was born in Montreal and
grew up in the South Bronx. He studied drama at Hofstra, intending to
be an actor, but changed his major from drama to English and ended up
teaching English for three years in Hempstead, Long Island.
In the mid-1970's, with his Bronx childhood friend Stony Browder, who
shared his deep fascination with 40's pop icons, he helped form Dr.
Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, a musical coalition that released
several albums fusing swing, rhythm and blues, and Latin styles. When
the Savannah Band's aspirations proved too grandiose to be realized,
Mr. Darnell adopted the alias Kid Creole and formed Kid Creole and the
Coconuts, the multi-ethnic Latin pop-funk group that has released six
critically praised albums. A seventh is scheduled for release this
spring on Columbia Records.
Recently, Mr. Darnell composed
the score for Francis Ford Coppola's ''Life Without Zoe,'' a segment in
the three-part film ''New York Stories,'' which also includes short
movies by Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese.
''In a Pig's
Valise'' is Mr. Darnell's second venture into the musical theater. In
1982, the Public Theater presented a staged concert version of ''Fresh
Fruit in Foreign Places,'' his Caribbean-style version of ''The
Odyssey,'' in which Kid Creole journeys from port to port in the
tropics searching for a lover who has disappeared. Three years ago, he
completed the Latin American-style adaptation of ''The Mikado'' for a
Public Theater production that was shelved when Kid Creole and the
Coconuts became a European sensation and went abroad on tour.
Mr. Darnell's nagging worry is that the audience who would most appreciate ''In a Pig's Valise'' may never discover it.
Copyright 1989 The New York Times Company
|
|
FRANK RICH
Review/Theater; The Gumshoe Stomp, Or, Sleuthing to Music
The New York Times
Wednesday, February 15, 1989
''In a Pig's Valise,'' the ''hard-boiled yarn with music'' at the
Second Stage, is an homage to detective fiction by a playwright whose
affection for Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett may be second only
to his love for the sound of his own voice. The playwright is Eric
Overmyer, the author of the widely produced ''On the Verge,'' a work of
such relentless erudition that its icy intricacies of diction linger
long after the play's subject and human mouthpieces have evaporated.
''In a Pig's Valise'' offers more of the same showy verbiage, but, as
they say, ''with music.'' Nonetheless, one is most likely to leave the
theater humming the similes.
New musicals are so rarely
produced, let alone by companies as ambitious as the Second Stage, that
the wastefulness of ''In a Pig's Valise'' is dispiriting. The premise,
though not original, promises fun. Mr. Overmyer propels his hero, the
trench-coated private eye James Taxi (a rumpled Nathan Lane), through
every cliche twist known to his pulp genre. As Taxi stalks the
Heartbreak Hotel at the corner of Neon and Lonely in the
''kiss-me-deadly night air,'' he encounters femmes fatales, red
herrings and unanswered questions that mount up ''like a stack of
unpaid utility bills.''
Mr. Overmyer's compulsive, unedited
wordplays mount up more precipitously still. Along with similes, ethnic
food references and double-entendres, his favorite tic is to tinker
idly with familiar phrases: ''a cut and blow-dried case'' or ''I get
the driftwood.'' One must do more to parody a literary style that is
already, in the hands of its wittiest practitioners, something of a
put-on. Mr. Overmyer is clever to a fault, as if he were trying to
imitate Tom Stoppard with the aid of a thesaurus. By Act II, the mere
mention of the words neon, noir, genre or gumshoe, however
linguistically fractured the usage, makes one squirm.
Aside
from a funny replay of the slapping scene from ''Chinatown,'' the only
amusing riffs are those in which the characters deconstruct their own
tale, commenting self-consciously on how vintage detective fiction (and
films) rely on the past tense, ''ominous underscoring'' and narrative
dissolves. Unfortunately, the plot - something an audience may want
even in a mock-detective story - is dismantled by the same academic
knowingness. The villains of ''In a Pig's Valise'' are trying to steal
American dreams, which leads to an avalanche of secondhand, Leslie
Fiedleresque ruminations on the metaphysical, political and erotic
implications of national myths perpetrated by the likes of Walt Disney
and John Dillinger.
As a musical - or a play with music, or
whatever - ''In a Pig's Valise'' seems an uneasy compromise among
strong personalities who never found the essential common ground for
collaboration. The composer, August Darnell of the band Kid Creole and
the Coconuts, is the kind of pop recruit the musical theater
desperately needs, but his own style meets the material halfway only in
some sultry saxophone solos. While the music and the onstage band are
agreeable, the score seems irrelevant to the show's milieu. So do Mr.
Overmyer's amateurish lyrics, with their dead words and inevitable
rhymes (''I'm a talent scout without a doubt/ I'm the one who's got the
clout.'') The director and choreographer, Graciela Daniele, goes her
own way as well by evoking the smoky atmosphere of her last theater
piece, ''Tango Apasionado,'' without the tangos. Without any drama to
propel it, ''In a Pig's Valise'' would have benefited from a
galvanizing style. But Ms. Daniele fails to impose a theatrical order
that might integrate the seemingly arbitrary musical numbers into the
script. Two dancing girls often sashay about for little reason other
than a temporary cessation of puns.
Though Mr. Lane is a
fine comic actor, he is, as Mr. Overmyer might say, a stalled Taxi - an
uncomfortable and unvaried singing detective. The rest of the cast can
charitably be described as campy, with the striking exception of Ada
Maris, who plays Delores Con Leche, a comic yet sexy lady in red, with
more musical-comedy verve than the rest of the company combined. I also
enjoyed the usher who deposited me in my seat with the request that I
''laugh really hard, because the critics are here tonight.'' If the
response of most of my neighbors was any indication, everybody these
days is a critic.
THE MALTESE MAGPIE - IN A PIG'S VALISE, book
and lyrics by Eric Overmyer; music by August Darnell; directed and
choreographed by Graciela Daniele; set design by Bob Shaw; lighting
design by Peggy Eisenhauer; costume design by Jeanne Button; musical
direction, Peter Schott; sound design, Gary and Timmy Harris; hair
design, Antonio Soddu; production stage manager, Robert Mark Kalfin;
stage manager, Paula Gray. Presented by the Second Stage Theater, Robyn
Goodman and Carole Rothman, artistic directors. At 2162 Broadway, at
76th Street.
James Taxi...Nathan Lane
Dolores Con Leche...Ada Maris
Zoot Alors and Gut Bucket...Jonathan Freeman
Root Choyce...Thom Sesma
The Bop Op...Reg E. Cathey
Blind Sax...Charlie Lagond
Shrimp Bucket...Michael McCormick
Mustang Sally...Lauren Tom
Dizzy Miss Lizzy...Dian Sorel
Copyright 1989 The New York Times Company |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
Don Shewey
7 Days
"Language-besotted as any die-hard
cruciverbalist and hip to the self-referential existentialism of
postmodern performance, he keeps his intellect in balance with a deep
need to entertain; he's a clown with a thesaurus, an incorrigible
punster, and a `prisoner of genre, a captive of kitsch,' like the
all-singing, all-dancing, trench-coated gumshoe narrator of IN A PIG'S
VALISE...off-Broadway hasn't had such a dazzling little musical since
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. And composer August Darnell (of Kid Creole and
the Coconuts fame) is a perfect match for Overmyer's pulpy
genre-mashing.... underneath the puns and wordplay, it is a
metaphysical detective story about the origin of pop-kitsch (a theme
throughout Overmyer's work) that treads the same territory as sci-fi
renegades William Gibson and Philip K Dick...."-
|
|
|
|
All rights reserved. All layouts and original artwork Copyright ©1998 - 2011 - Tony Sables (The Chameleon).
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors. |
|
