GO TO BREL By Peter Filichia
There were plenty of conversations such as this 57 years ago this week:
MUSICAL THEATER SAVANT: From what I heard, you can’t even call it a musical. There’s no book. No story. Only four people standing on stage and singing one song after another. That’s entertainment???
MUSICAL THEATER FAN: Well, we all expect to see something different off-Broadway.
SAVANT: “Off-Broadway” means a show in an actual theater. This is at The Village Gate, which is a just a cabaret. And what’s this thing called again?”
FAN: JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS.
SAVANT: Well, I’m very happy for this Jacques Brel that he’s alive and well and living in Paris, but those who are alive and well and living in New York don’t know or cares that Brel is even alive.
FAN: Well, one of his songs is famous: “If You Go Away,” or “Ne Me Quitte Pas.”
SAVANT: Oh, don’t tell me they’re going to include an old song in a new show!
FAN: No, they’re not.
SAVANT: On the other hand, given that it’s just a cabaret, who cares? A well-known song would help them get a cast album, which I’m sure won’t happen, anyway.
FAN: Actually, Columbia’s going to do it.
SAVANT: That’s one I won’t buy.
FAN: That’s two you won’t buy. It’s going to be a two-record set in a box.
SAVANT: Yeah, right. There’s never been an off-Broadway musical that’s got a two-record set in a box, let alone written by one written by a French guy.
FAN: Actually, Brel is actually Belgian, although he writes in French.
SAVANT: Wait! Are these songs going to be sung in French?
FAN: No, English. Two American songwriters have translated and adapted them.
SAVANT: Who? Alan Jay Lerner? Stephen Sondheim?
FAN: No, Mort Shuman and Eric Blau.
SAVANT: Who?!
FAN: Shuman wrote the lyrics to Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas.”
SAVANT: Who could ask for anything more?
FAN: He’s going to be in the show, too.
SAVANT: Proof positive that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And the other luminary, this Eric Blau, is he going to be in the show, too?
SAVANT: No, but his wife Elly Stone is.
SAVANT: Oh, yes, every great show is enhanced by nepotism. Who’s directing? Eric’s mother? Elly’s father? Mort’s sister-in-law?
FAN: Moni Yakim. He’s a very famous mime.
SAVANT: Oh, a mime is exactly who you want directing a musical. Maybe now that he’s involved, it won’t be a show where four people stand on stage and sing one song after another; maybe they’ll just stand on stage.
And so went many a discussion at that time. Except that JACQUES BREL turned out to surprise both savants and fans.
There are still plenty of both because productions proliferated around the world and the cast album never went out of print.
Listen, and you’ll understand why. First off, Brel’s vamps rival John Kander’s in commanding our attention. One of the best comes in the opening number “Marathon,” a song that reiterates how quickly times flies. Also memorable is the vamp of “Alone,” where we’re reminded of the mistakes that cause us to lose our loves.
Among the many that delight in both music and lyrics is “Brussels.” In addition to a catchy melody, we hear a comment on parents: “He had no brains; neither did she. How bright could I turn out to be?”
“Madeleine” has a man so in love with a woman that he doesn’t care that her family hates him. (We can infer that in time, he will.)
“Sons of” is a cautionary tale about having children, for you never know how your kids will turn out. Or, as Josh Rubins wrote in the off-Broadway musical BROWNSTONE, “There’s an assassin in each bassin-et.”
Brel could write tender, too. “If We Only Have Love,” the revue’s final song, was heard all during the ‘70s at as many weddings as “Sunrise, Sunset.”
Arguable best of all is “Mathilde.” You might relate if you’ve ever had a toxic mate with whom you’ve broken up, only to have the damn nuisance announce that he or she is returning to your life. Your love-hate relationship provides a conundrum. Should you give the person a twelfth chance? Are you even able to keep yourself from succumbing?
As for our singer, we can see how desperate this adult man is when he screams out “Momma! Can you hear me yell? Your baby boy’s goin’ back to hell! Mathilde’s come back to me!”
JACQUES BREL would become the longest-running revue in off-Broadway history. It ran almost a thousand performances longer than the previous champ THE MAD SHOW. (That’s 1,847 performances to 871, if you’re scoring with us.)
Since this revue brought Brel to prominence, his songs have been recorded by a veritable “Who’s Who” of recording artists. Even those who had become famous earlier – in the ‘30s (Marlene Dietrich), ‘40s (Frank Sinatra), ‘50s (Brenda Lee), and ‘60s (David Bowie) – spruced up their acts with Brel songs.
Even after the musical closed in 1972, such artists from the ‘70s (Sting), ‘80s (Cyndi Lauper), and ‘90s (Brian Molko) continued the legacy. Now in this century, Brel is still heard, and the revue is often revived, although it’s usually called JACQUES BREL IS …, for he died in 1978.
At least he was alive and well enough to appear in the film version in 1975. Now it was only three people singing one song after another – Blau, Stone and Joe Masiell – with Brel in a cameo where he sang the now-included “Ne Me Quitte Pas.”
More often than not, the three principals were backed by an ensemble. Alas, the men and women occasionally pulled focus, partly because they resembled veterans of some Fellini phantasmagoria.
What’s more, some of the scenes defied description. One had the three performers looking into a washed-ashore boat that had puppets of themselves inside. Another actually replicated the world’s most famous crucifixion, with three crosses on a hill. Also on view were cemetery headstones, a casket that moved on its own power and a scene that reiterated that some people are disgustingly sloppy when they eat.
So, let’s revisit our Fan and Savant soon after the film opened:
FAN: So, did you see the JACQUES BREL movie?
SAVANT: Yes, and it stunk. It was so great when it was simply
four people standing on stage and singing one song after another …
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon.
