A NIGHT WITH JANIS JOPLIN THE MUSICAL, Peacock Theatre

Who wouldn’t want to spend a night with Janis Joplin? Despite barely hitting the charts on this side of the pond, the American rock ‘n’ roll star still epitomizes the best (and worst) of the ’60s more than fifty years before he joined the Club 27. Not that you’d know from this show.

Written and directed by Randy Johnson and with the support of the singer’s family, A Night with Janis Joplin The Musical he never really decides what he wants to be. Is it about Janis’ early influences? We want to hear about her siblings, her early thoughts on art, and how she went from a middle-class Texas background to famously hanging out with Jimi Hendrix (and, not to mention, the infamous cu Leonard Cohen)? Or do we want to see a fictional version of her rocking out?

Perhaps on a misguided mission to defy the thinking that “less is more,” the end result is something in a decidedly not-more-than-all-that mix. All the while, the excellent Mary Bridget Davies gives us bored Joplin: supremely confident command, some cursing nonchalance, and blast after blast of bold blues played at blistering volume. Frankly, it’s a performance that deserves a much better show than this, and if it hadn’t been detracted from Johnson’s many diversions, it would have had more of an impact. Possibly due to the stress of the role, Davies relents The bat from hellIt’s Sharon Sexton for matinees.

Those diversions, to be fair, are occasionally enjoyable. Against a backdrop of harrowing lyrics about childhood affairs and Broadway musicals, the first half focuses on the forgotten classics that inspired the young Joplin. Songs from icons such as Etta James, Bessie Smith, Odetta and the Queen of Soul herself Aretha Franklin are performed live by a quartet (Kalisha Amaris, Georgia Bradshaw, Choolwe Laina Muntanga and Danielle Steers) who also double as a singing troupe label. “Joplinaires” (not a term Janis would probably have much truck with). Almost all of Joplin’s biggest hits are cover versions, and it’s fun to hear what her inspirations sounded like before she turned them into rawer rock numbers.

The second half is more theatrics as Davies is more front and center, her simple calls and responses welcoming the tense press night audience into actions she doesn’t want, can’t, is too sober or pure and simply too British to interpret them. Her blistering performance as she flies through ‘Piece Of Me’, ‘Me And Bobby McGee’ and ‘Mercedes Benz’ puts the poorer aspects of this production to shame; at times, it feels like this show was created not to tour theaters but to provide aural entertainment for cruise ship diners.

Apart from the splendid costumes for Jennie Quirk’s singers, we have no sense that we are in the 60s. None of the other musicians have period styles, and the set is a basic portal with a few platforms and a few video projections of the artwork Joplin’s early days. There’s no real sense of time and place, and it’s not helped by a historical perspective that’s more hagiography than biography; in this age of Wikipedia, Johnson’s choice to gently nod to her crippling and ultimately fatal heroin addiction and avoid any mention of her eventual untimely demise is astounding.

A Night With Janis Joplin The Musical continues at the Peacock Theater until September 28.

Photo credit: Danny Kaan

Comments

To post a comment, you must register and log in.