Review: Ute Lemper Astounds in TIME TRAVELER at Joe's Pub

Just after I got out of college and was starting my career in theatre in Dallas, TX, like so many other fledgling performers, I collected as many CDs as I could lay my hands on (remember CDs?). I would go into every off-the-path record store to see what was new and different. On one of those voyages of discovery I happened to pick up a copy of “Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill.” The only thing I knew about Kurt Weill, I had learned from the famous recordings of Lotte Lenya that she had made when she was nearly 60. Lenya’s recordings felt wistful and lived in. She sang about a world that had vanished. I found out later that that long-ago world had a name: Weimar, a decadent world of artistic variety created by one World War, and swept away by another World War. Lenya’s voice seemed to be the bittersweet embodiment of that twilight world.

Ute Lemper did not sound like that. She was not singing about days gone by. Her Weill was sexy, dangerous, and bold. This woman who was roughly the same young age as myself approached Weill and Brecht as if the tunes had just been written. I wondered how this young German woman could possibly understand a time period she was not alive to experience and be so good at it. I followed her over the years, as she became one of the most acclaimed cabaret and theatre singers in the business. There was no one who sang Brecht and Weill more authentically than she. And since the retirement of Teresa Stratas, Lemper is probably the foremost interpreter of Weill in the world.

So it was with great excitement that I sat down to watch her, live, the other night at Joe’s Pub, in her show TIME TRAVELER. The show is part of a tour that promotes an album and a memoir by the same name. She is now roughly the same age as Lenya was when she made those famous recordings. But Ute Lemper has not settled into any bittersweet version of herself. She is still sexy, dangerous, and bold. What was a surprise to me was the startling scope of her talent. Brecht and Weill was only the tip of the iceberg. She can wail like a rock star, do spot-on impersonations (her Marlene Dietrich is perfection,) and she is a first-class jazz artist - all of this, in addition to being a musical theatre star and the veteran of major productions of Cats, Peter Pan, Cabaret, and Chicago. Her program is a perfect representation of cabaret in its classic definition. It is on the edge, poetic, filled with humanity, frequently political, and driven by the force of her one-of-a-kind personality.

TIME TRAVELER, as the name suggests, is a retrospective look through the periods of her 40-year career. She includes stops in her Weimar period, her Charles Bukowski Project, her Marlene Dietrich show, several songs by Friedrich Hollaender, writer of the Blue Angel, and a section of songs written by Ms. Lemper herself. It is a bold choice to begin a show with a song as cynical as “Solomon Song” from The Threepenny Opera, but that’s precisely what she did, combining it with Hollaender’s “Munchhausen.” In a world where senseless violence reigns, her world-weary opening makes perfect sense. She followed with her own composition “Time Traveler,” which set up the structure of the evening.

Lemper's first stop is at Weill, of course. She sang both Anna 1 and Anna 2 from the prologue of “The Seven Deadly Sins.” She then proved what a great cabaret performer she is by doing an extended version of “Pirate Jenny” in which she used two men in the front row to the delight of the rest of the audience. She even appropriated one of the gents’ eyeglasses as a prop.

Her next stop charted the rise and decline of the great film icon, Marlene Dietrich. The section was based on a conversation with the legend herself, after sending her a letter to apologize for being so frequently compared to her in the press. The highlight of the section was a beautifully acted rendition of Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone? “ Dietrich sang this tune when she, tentatively, returned to Germany in 1960. There were many in the audience who unfairly held a grudge against her for leaving Germany during the war. It was a courageous plea for unity and an end to violence of all kinds. Lemper added her own memories of a divided Berlin in her own tune, “Ghosts of Berlin,” which she combined with Phillip Glass’ “Streets of Berlin” and Brecht/Weill’s “Alabama Song.”

Ute Lemper made a time-traveling stop in her work on the Charles Bukowski Project. The project was an album of poems by the poet Bukowski that Lemper had written music for. His “Crunch” was a beautifully profound art song. The last time stop took Ms Lemper to Paris, where she presented two of her own compositions. “2023 Magical Stone” was a full-out rock ballad that she pulled out all the stops for. And, finally, “Envie d’Amour” was a romantic ballad that wouldn’t sound out of place in the mouth of Edith Piaf, in fact, she threaded snatches of “La Vie en Rose” into the accompaniment.

TIME TRAVELER was a fascinating look at the life of an extremely versatile artist. She has much art to give us in the future. It was wonderful to have a moment to take a backward glance at her extraordinary achievements, so far. Ute Lemper is a reminder of our shared humanity. Her honesty as an artist should be a beacon of light to all who care about the art of cabaret.

For more on Ute Lemper, visit her website, utelemper.com, or follow her @utelemper on Instagram. For more fine shows at Joe’s Pub, please go to publictheater.org>programs>joes-pub.

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