Review - Voca People: White Noise

They look a little like Blue Man Group, they sound a little like Toxic Audio and they talk a lot like Andy Kaufman and Carol Kane playing Latka and Simka on Taxi, but while Voca People might give the appearance of being a bit too tourist trappy for we jaded New York theatre types, it's the kind of family friendly, good clean fun that's legitimately clever, catchly and often downright adorable.

I'll admit I didn't think it was going to be my kind of thing when I first read creator/director Lior Kalfo's premise concerning a white-clad octet of a cappella singing aliens from the planet Voca (Soprana, Mezzo, Alta, Tenoro, Bari-Tone and Tubas, along with Commander Beat On, who mimics boom-box beats, and Deputy Scratcher, who vocalizes vinyl scratches) who land on Earth needing to musically refuel their spaceship by absorbing the musical knowledge of humans, but the briskly played ninety minutes features lively, sometimes unexpectedly complex arrangements by Shai Fishman, funny staging by Kalfo and a highly charismatic group of comedian singers who not only sizzle in harmony, but who each create distinctly humorous personalities using broken English and Voca gibberish.

The higher-ups seem determined not to let us know who exactly plays what part but the names of the ten performers billed (I'm guessing two are alternates) are Ryan Alexander, Mercer Boffey, Laura Dadap, Emily Drennan, Tiago Grade, Chelsey Keding, Jermaine Miles, Christine Paterson, Gavriel Savit and Jonathan Shew.

There is a ton of audience participation that singles out certain spectators, so avoid the aisles and especially the front row if you're not into it. Mostly it involves performers placing their hands on the sculls of visitors to intake the music within them. Once they've powered up their first supply they offer a quick history of Earth music, which includes snippets of Handel, Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, The Beatles, Little Richard, Michael Jackson, Madonna and many more. A movie music medley has them miming moments from the Pink Panther series, The Godfather, Mission Impossible, Titanic and the James Bond collection.

For classical music fans there are selections from Carmen, The Marriage of Figaro and a wild rendering of Flight of The Bumblebee.

One lucky gal gets brought up on stage to be serenaded in a romantic pop medley by the guys. The jealous Voca women then bring three men up to seduce. This segment has a couple of slightly naughty moments but nothing that will emotionally scar the kiddies for life. In fact, the kids will have a blast at this one, as well as the adults.

Just two little quibbles: A) No matter how charming you are I will not clap along to anyone's chorus of "We Are The World." B) When you're in the theatre district and you want to sing a song about New York, it's best to stick to the one by Kander & Ebb. With the lyrics Liza sings, thank you very much.

Photos by Leon Sokoletski.

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When Silence! The Musical made its debut at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2005 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival it was a completely sold out in advance smash hit run even before one note had been played before a paying audience. Perhaps there were some who were attracted to the idea of a musical spoof of the Oscar-winning film, The Silence of the Lambs, but most of the early buzz was a direct result of composer/lyricists Jon and Al Kaplan's shrewd use of the internet.

Over two years before anyone thought the story of FBI trainee Clarice Starling's uneasy partnership with imprisoned cannibal/murderer Hannibal Lecter, who helps her capture a serial killer with a preference for plus-sized female victims, would ever make it to the song-and-dance stage, the brothers began offering free CDs of their score from the unproduced show's official web site, which also included audio clips to songs like "If I Could Smell Her Cunt" and "Put The f-ing Lotion In The Basket." By the time the show was announced for the Fringe, with a book by Hunter Bell and direction and choreography by Christopher Gattelli, it had already gathered a solid fan base.

Silence! returns to New York, now in an Off-Broadway production still helmed by Gattelli, which, despite some tinkering, very closely resembles its Fringe predecessor. But the context of being a commercial Off-Broadway production, as opposed to being one of dozens thrown at the public with very little preparation during a brief festival, perhaps obligates the show to be more inspired than what's currently housed at Theatre 80 St. Marks. Those "we have a very small budget so we have to get creative" laughs don't go over as well when patrons are paying Off-Broadway prices.

Over-stretched into two acts from its previous ninety-minute incarnation, Silence! still offers a good deal of a fun, mindless parody and outrageously distasteful songs, though Bell's book stays so closely chained to the film that a refresher screening might be in order before you can truly appreciate the details.

The Kaplans have come up with a lively collection of catchy tunes, but the score is at its best when the lyrics are at their most scatological. Words that some may find objectionable are used selectively for the best comic punch. The previously mentioned "If I Could Smell Her Cunt," the first solo for Lecter, is a fine character introduction song, romantically expressing the lonely prisoner's desire for the slightest bit of connection with another human being. Broadway leading man Brent Barrett sinks his rich baritone and icy glare into the number and gets comic mileage by playing it straight. The number is followed by a dream ballet pas de deux, the running gag of which is when Ashlee Dupre keeps placing the epicenter of her multiple splits in the vicinity of Callan Bergmann's nose.

Stephen Bienskie plays up the campiness as he repeats his fringe role as pre-op transsexual serial killer, Buffalo Bill. As he admires his own female appearance the Kaplans provide a fun number where he sings of a sex act he'd like to do to himself with a lyric continually repeating the word in a variety of contexts. It's not the word that's funny, but the complexity of its repetition.

While the evening sputters a bit between the solid laughs, the musical always seems in top form when leading lady Jenn Harris is on stage in the Jodie Foster role of Clarice. Shortly before creating the role in the Fringe production, Harris was an unknown who made a smashing Off-Broadway debut, squeezing out tremendous laughs and completely stealing the show in a small supporting role in Modern Orthodox. Sadly, she has not been very visible on the New York stage between productions of Silence!, as she is a remarkably intelligent and creative comic talent.

More than just impersonating Foster, she finds the precise degree of overplaying her underplaying to maximize laughs without sacrificing character. As a quiet, serious-minded young woman with a pronounced lisp, the joke of the performance is how inappropriate her character is to be the star of a musical. When she struts around like Chita Rivera in a hot Fosse-ish dance number, surrounded by derby-clad lamb chorus boys, she's still the quiet, serious-minded, lisping heroine, suddenly empowered with a Broadway belt that, if not exactly artful, is still loud and clear.

Six years after its premiere, Jenn Harris remains the primary reason to see Silence! Hopefully, when this limited run is completed, there'll be more opportunities to see her in material that's more consistently worthy.

Photos by Carol Rosegg: Top: Brent Barrett and Jenn Harris; Bottom: Jeff Hiller, Harry Bouvy, Jenn Harris and Howard Kaye.

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"That's me up there," said the gentleman sitting to my right at Tuesday night's performance of Hair when I ask him at intermission if he was having a good time.

I knew his response would be positive, as I could hear him obviously being moved by the production during the first act. He was a big guy, strong, maybe in his early 60s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and sporting a crew cut. To look at him you might think he was a retired cop or a Vietnam vet. For all I know, maybe he was. But in row K of the St. James Theatre there was a rush of memories passing through him of his youthful days as a hippie.

"That was my life in those days. The music, the clothes, peace and love. I wouldn't change a bit of it. Not one bit."

Over forty years after its premiere as the first production in Joseph Papp's Public Theatre, not all of Hair goes down well with contemporary audiences. There's the positive and sometimes comical depiction of casual drug use and the strong suggestion of unprotected sex with multiple partners, not to mention the reality that many of the characters seemed to be in no hurry to get jobs, living off their parents while denouncing the morals they stand for. But what the fellow sitting next to me saw most of all was the supportive community of friends that these youngsters had formed.

"My kids are great," he told me, "but I feel sorry for them. They sit at their computers all day. When I was that age I went out and I met other kids. We shared our music, our ideas, we cared about each other. That's what this show is all about."

That sense of a supportive community wasn't always a part of Hair, which went through wholesale changes between its successful, but not earth-shattering original run at The Public and its nearly unthinkable Broadway success. Bookwriter/lyricists Gerome Ragni and James Rado were a couple of struggling New York actors who saw the flower power movement as a juicy subject for a musical where they could write leading roles for themselves. Ragni was Berger, a cocky, sexually charged high school student and de facto leader of a tribe of Manhattan hippies and Rado was his newly-drafted buddy Claude, who couldn't decide if he should join his friends in burning their draft cards and, if necessary, fleeing to Canada, or comply with his parents' wishes that he go fight in Vietnam for his country.

Galt MacDermot, a clean-cut suburban dad, composed a score that fused rock with funk, rockabilly and showtune, but the show never jelled until the genius downtown experimental theatre director, Tom O'Horgan, was brought in. At O'Horgan's insistence, chunks of the already thin book were removed and new songs were added, but most importantly, he had the actors think of the characters they were playing as a tribe of outcasts, born from the generation of Americans that won World War II and rebelling against being drafted into a new war. They bonded through a mutual need for breaking conventions through anarchy, which was expressed on stage through comic vaudevilles mimicking Marx Brothers irreverence (Is is any wonder that, before the age of home videos, the late 60s saw a renewed interest in the films of the Marx Brothers?) and songs that flippantly expressed then-shocking sentiments like, "Black boys are delicious," "Masturbation can be fun," and the positively brilliant, "Answer my weary query, Timothy Leary, dearie."

With a score that frequently hits gorgeous peaks (the mystically moody "Aquarius," the softly whimsical "Good Morning, Starshine," the merrily mod "Manchester, England," the grimly poetic "The Flesh Failures (Let The Sun Shine In)" the plaintive "Where Do I Go?," and the celebratory title song) Hair can easily slip into being treated as a concert with a slight narrative, but director Diane Paulus, who assembled the text for this production from its various developmental stages, emphasizes that sense of community in both its positive and flawed aspects. When political activist Sheila, the only character who is actually working to improve the world and make a future for herself, sings "Easy To Be Hard," the lyric illuminates how many of her friends can mindlessly chant for peace and love without truly understanding their responsibility to themselves and those around them.

When this production originated in Central Park, and then initially moved to Broadway, Paulus had the advantage of working with seasoned musical theatre actors who not only sang the score beautifully and expressively, but had the serious acting chops to truly delve into the material and bring out unwritten details. Now, the national tour of Hair settles into the St. James for a summer stopover, with a smaller, easier-to-travel version of Scott Pask's scaffold set and a company made up of both newcomers and understudies graduating to leading roles. While the new cast is energetic and enthused, there are a few pitfalls.

Several of the performers spoke a good deal of their lyrics on Tuesday night, a sure sign of vocal fatigue, while others strained for high notes. There were the occasional lapses into contemporary singing styles, particularly when Kaitlin Kiyan power belted "Frank Mills," sapping the simple ballad of its naiveté. There is less acting this time around and more performing.

But the material is stellar and Paulus' smart staging keeps the trouble spots in check. Steel Berkhardt makes for a funny; sexually free Berger and Paris Remillard counters with a sweet and empathetic Claude. Phyre Hawkins gets the show off to an enchanting start as she leads the tribe in "Aquarius" and Darrius Nichols scores in both humor and funk as Hud, the black guy who loves making white people uncomfortable. The most interesting of the bunch is Caren Lyn Tackett, who strikes the balance between activist Sheila's serious commitment to human rights and her phantasmagoric belief in the mind's spiritual power to levitate The Pentagon.

If Hair returns with the faint whiff of summer stock in the air, it's still a heck of a fun party with a poignant kick-in-the-gut finish. Just ask my seat-neighbor, who I last saw joyously dancing on stage at the finale, no doubt with a heart full of memories of summers of love.

Photos by Joan Marcus.

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