A LOT OF HOLES IN THIS CONCERT, AND A
LOT OF PROBLEMS ARE BURIED IN THOSE HOLES
Mean Streets, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and Hugo. This list of iconic movies spans five decades, and all are directed by the short, legendary, Italian-American man, Martin Scorsese. Whether it’s a complex tracking shot or gangsters being comedians or brutes wrestling with their existence in a tragic fashion, the name Scorsese can’t help being uttered or written in discussions, commentaries, reviews, or analysis of cinema. This year, the For the Record series pays tribute to Scorsese through songs and scenes from his noteworthy films with For the Record: Scorsese the Concert. Half of it works so well and half of it is so bizarrely awful that it ends up being an unrewarding experience. No doubt Director Anderson Davis culls together a tremendous ensemble of excellent singers, but the majority of them have acting skills under par to their vocal skills. On top of that, Davis also unfairly burdens his ensemble with the albatross of a thinly structured and weakly developed show.
James Byous and Angela Pupello are the only two performers from the ensemble who act out their roles well. Byous brings the fierce intensity and black comedy that epitomizes Joe Pesci’s chilling portrayals of low-life gangsters. Pupello, who also serves as Choreographer, chews up the scenery as Katherine Hepburn from The Aviator. Everyone else in the ensemble (including the director) ought to treat and train their acting as diligently as they do their singing, because the results are not yet ready for primetime.
Had Davis and his creative team (Shane Scheel and Christopher Lloyd Bratten) excised the famous scenes being acted out altogether, they would have played to their ensemble’s greatest strength (their singing) and therefore saved their production and the audience from suffering. The best singer of the lot is DiCaprio doppelganger Von Smith. His performances of U2’s “Hands that Built America” and The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” are magnificent; with full confidence I can declare that he exceeds both Bono and Eric Burdon with his soaring and soulful interpretation.
The Raging Bulls (the backing band) consist of Bratten on Keys/MD, Jonny Morrow on Bass, Robert Humphreys on Drums, and Nick Perez on Guitar. They played tremendously overall, but it is surprising how “House of the Rising Sun” is transformed from the iconic spidery guitar and dancing organ arrangement to a loud, power chord-heavy, karaoke-sounding number.
It’s interesting to notice that there are no songs by The Band in spite of Scorsese’s longtime partnership with Robbie Robertson (frontman of The Band and music supervisor on many of Scorsese’s films). Not only is The Last Waltz the gold standard when it comes to concert films (and this is, after all, Scorsese the CONCERT), but “The Weight,” with its sing-song chorus, is ripe for a dinner theater setting such as Rockwell Table & Stage (“The Weight” was listed in 2004 as #41 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time).
Pupello’s choreography makes the most of an unforgiving space, but Davis places this concert on the stage, in the audience, to the far sides of the room, and on top of bar counters; this could be effective were there not columns that block 30% of your viewing experience; but alas – they do, and it is taxing to constantly move and angle your head. The best choreographed sequence is the “Bad” number where everyone does their best Michael Jackson shuffle.
The experience is bizarre because this cabaret/concert concoction doesn’t know whether to homage or parody the legacy of Scorsese. It is neither chronologically nor thematically driven, and because it isn’t fully realized and thoroughly thought out, it can be frustrating and excruciating to endure, regardless of the sections that amuse and entertain. Hopefully this troubled work will serve as a launching pad to showcase something better.
photos by Joanna Strapp
For the Record: Scorsese the Concert
Rockwell Table & Stage
1714 N. Vermont in Los Feliz Village
ends on February 5, 2013
for tickets, call 323-661-6163 ext. 20, or visit Rockwell