Pangea is bringing back by popular demand "Welcome to the Jungle," Salty Brine's tour de force cabaret concoction, for a five-show major engagement on Tuesdays November 7, 14, 21, 28 and Wednesday November 29, all at 7:30pm.
Brine's swashbucklingly original "Welcome to the Jungle," is part of his Living Record Collection series of performances built around popular albums. Here the recipe involves mixing
Harry Nilsson's hit album "Nilsson Schmilsson" with
Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book." To deftly join these seemingly mismatched bedfellows, Brine tells riveting stories out of school of his summers at Camp Mowgli in New Hampshire, as if the whole thing were a phantasmagorically jolly campfire jamboree.
Directed by Max Reuben, with arrangements and music direction by Nate Weida, the show also features Brine's band of fellow campers -- the multi-instrumentalists Emil MGloin, Shelby Phillips, Se
Rena Miller, Nate Weida (piano), and Wes Zurick -- who play bass guitar, guitar, banjo, cello, violin, ukulele, melodica, cajon, and tambourine. Costumes are by Heather McDevitt Barton. The series is produced by Reed Whitney.
Since launching the Series with the Talking Heads album "Stop Making Sense," performed at The Bowery Poetry Club in 2014, Brine has covered 16 albums while developing a trademark form that is equal parts cabaret, play, and performance art.
Earlier shows have explored such albums as Queen's "A Night at the Opera" (morphed with the story of Brine's radio broadcast legend grandfather and namesake); Weezer's "Pinkerton" blended with "Madame Butterfly"), and Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" (which grafts Brine's teen lovesick diaries with "The Diary of Anne Frank"). Other forays have bivouacked into "Purple Rain," "Rumours," "She's So Unusual," "21" and the soundtrack of "Dirty Dancing." The series was in residence at The Red Room from 2015 to 2016. "Welcome to the Jungle" premiered at Pangea in May.
Actor, playwright and cabaret artist, Brine is on the faculty of
Playwrights Horizons Theater School, NYU. He is part of the vaudeville duo of Pepper 'n Sam with
Justin Levine (
Ars Nova and
Joe's Pub), and is currently rewriting the libretto of the musical "Kicks" (music by
Alan Menken). Raised in Boston and Charlotte NC, Brine's grandfather was the host of a beloved children's television show, Salty's Shack, that aired in Rhode Island in the '50s and '60s. For over 50 years Salty Sr. was a morning-drive radio fixture in Providence. Carrying on the tradition, Brine's father, Wally Brine, co-hosted Boston's legendary morning-drive radio program, The Loren and Wally Show, for over 30 years.
"Welcome to the Jungle," Salty Brine's wildly original campfire jamboree, returns to Pangea,
178 Second Avenue, for five-show major engagement on Tuesdays November 7, 14, 21, 28 and Wednesday November 29, all at 7:30pm. There is a $20 music charge + a $20 food and drink minimum. To purchase tickets online visit
www.pangeanyc.com , or for info call
212/995-0900.
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