Review: WHAT MAKES A MAN at the Berkley Street Theatre

While reviewing What Makes a Man (WMAM), now playing at the Berkley Street Theatre, it's tempting to comment on what's not there, what could and should be there, rather than what is there.

What is on display is a marvelous musical stage portrait of Charles Aznavour, the world renowned French singer/songwriter, actor and political activist/diplomat. A man of the world, he is capable of singing in five languages. One of the last surviving "showmen," he still is capable of filling the world's most prestigious concert halls. For example, a year ago he performed for the first time in 25 years at London's Royal Albert Hall. Demand was so great, a second concert was booked there for this past June.

Neil McCormick of The Telegraph wrote about that October 2013 concert:

"Small, dapper, with fluid movements and a rich, expressive voice, it almost seems condescending to say that Aznavour looks and sounds amazing for his age. Particularly since he has always seemed old. He wrote his first song in 1941 and by the time his fame spread from the Continent to Britain in the 1970s, his sets were filled with elegant lyrical ballads grappling with nostalgia, regret and the relentless passage of time.

"You could say he has grown into the songs, and the conclusion of Yesterday When I Was Young is delivered with such devastating, wistful pathos it is faintly mind-boggling to consider that it was written in 1964, when Aznavour was just 40."

Significantly, in 1998 CNN and visitors to Time Online named Aznavour as Entertainer of the Century. He received nearly 18 percent of the vote, surpassing Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. He has written more than 800 songs and sold more than 100 million records.

It's easy to see why a theatrical presentation created from his songs would be so attractive. It worked for Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel (Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris). Why not for Charles Aznavour?

So when he and his estate agreed to make his songs available to Necessary Angel Theatre and its incoming

artistic director Jennifer Tarver to create an original piece of theatre one can easily see what an exciting opportunity it presented.

The Toronto Star has said she "is generally regarded as one of the finest talents of her generation" and that is not an exaggeration. Her productions of Pinter's "The Homecoming" and Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" were greeted with critical and popular acclaim at the Stratford Festival while her production of "Venus in Fur" for Canadian Stage is returning for a third time this December.

With Justin Ellington, cousin of Duke Ellington, Tarver compiled a workshop presented in Toronto last March that Aznavour himself attended. He was so delighted with what he saw he agreed to work with Tarver on "an artist to artist basis."

"What Makes a Man" is the result.

In her Director's Note, Tarver says WMAM "began as a portrait of Aznavour himself, a collage of his life seen through four distinct aspects of his personality: a poet, a lover, a performer and a survivor. As the piece evolved, the lens of the performer has become the central focal point of the story."

But rather than being a theatre piece, WMAM in its present state is a 65 minute cabaret without intermission. The four singers perform their songs and then sit alone until it's their turn to sing again. Given their isolation, this could be Sartre's "No Exit" ("Huis Clos") the musical. But, of course, here Hell isn't other people; it's the awful acoustics of the Berkeley Theatre and its exposed brick walls.

The six-piece band begins with an upbeat, jazz/blues overture, then New York's Kenny Brawner - the"performer" is introduced like he's an act in a nightclub. Brawner, dressed in a white suit takes to the barren stage, sits at a Fender Rhodes electric piano and sings the plaintive "Yesterday When I Was Young."

As the show progresses, each remaining singer enters. Next is the "poet," Andrew Penner, dressed as a one-man-band busker singing "It Will Be My Day." He's followed by the "lover," Saida Baba Talibah, dressed in a sexy, red dress, singing "I Want To Be Kissed," followed by Louise Pitre, "the survivor" all dressed in black, kicking things up a notch with "La Bohème," an expression of "nostalgie de la boue."

The bilingual Pitre, who is coming off her popularly and critically acclaimed performance as Rose in "Gypsy" at the Chicago Shakespeare Theare, is wonderful as she sings this song and other solos including "On Ne Sait Jamais," "Take Me Along" and especially the dramatic "A Young Girl" about a ravaged and abandoned16-year-old left to die on the side of the road. She uses her wide range to evoke the drama with a passion and commitment that clearly shows this music is in her blood.

Saidah Baba Talibah is especially seductive then joyful in "Love At Last You Have Found Me" while Andrew Penner is pensive in the show's title number.

...

A highlight of the show is the ensemble's spirited song of defiance "I Drink."

"I drink to catch a gleam of the love we degraded,
Of a life that has faded like the vanishing moon.
I drink, as in a dream, to my waning desire,
To the passionate fire that has burned out so soon."

Lyrics like those clearly show the influence Aznavour has had on other singers of today such as Leonard Cohen.

As a cabaret, this is a wonderful show featuring Aznavour's timeless songs of the human condition in many of its forms performed by four great singers.

But it requires more as a piece of original theatre. Many people today, it is a shame, have never heard of Aznavour or his life. Fewer still know he is an honorary member of the Order of Canada or that he owns a house in Montreal.

His life is full of rich material. Born in 1924, he is walking history, especially because of his friendship with legendary singer Edith Piaf who gave him his big break in 1946 when she took him with her on tour in France and to the United States.

It would be great to see a second incarnation of WMAM that incorporates Aznavour's life and times through photography, video, quotes from his writings and lyrics and imagery especially from the Paris of his time including his birthplace Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson come to mind.

But that's another show and not the one now playing at the Berkeley.

See it, especially if you enjoy elegant songs of love, loss, sadness and the whole darn thing performed by heavenly voices and staged with some of the best talent we have.

With the world's news teeming of ISIS and international terrorism, Gaza, the Ebola Virus, the international economic crisis, Aznavour's songs remind us of our innate beauty and hope.

To paraphrase novelist John Updike's description of the work of Argentine novelist Manuel ("Kiss of the Spider Woman") Puig, Aznavour's world, too, is "a dark and harsh one, lit only by the thousand guttering candles of persistent human romanticism."

What Makes A Man is now playing through November 2nd. More information available at CanadianStage.com.

Top Photo: Louise Pitre in What Makes a Man. All Photo by John Lauener.

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