The play includes some 20 songs, and in each there is a characteristic intensity. Theodore is triumphant as the Onstage Janis she has great vocal range, with depths and coloratura highs, touchingly tender at times, raucous at others, with a remarkable likeness to the husky Joplin sound. Santo contributes a necessary, sometimes sardonic voice to the storytelling. But she’s tenacious beyond belief.Ī different aspect of Joplin is drawn out by an offstage interviewer (Michael Santo), who probes into the reasons for her actions, pushing buttons that clearly disturb. Shy, tender, yet becoming defensive in her later years, this is a lonely, troubled woman-child with needs that her adoring crowds could not satisfy. In Curtin’s acting there’s a resonating poignance, the feeling that a very young girl lived within Janis’ persona.
She recommends that Laura, her young sister, read “The Hobbit.” Always, she is interested in the details of her family’s life: How are the cats, how was school, how do you like our record? A revealing and intimate biography about Janis Joplin, the Queen of Classic Rock, written by her younger sister. “I cannot be a star and have only 65 dollars,” she writes. Buy a cheap copy of Love, Janis book by Laura Joplin. The letters bring authentic emotion to the private person.
The production may have been inspired by Laura Joplin’s book, but the real inspiration is the casting of two singular theater talents, Laura Theodore and Catherine Curtin, as the two facets of Janis Joplin. With the stage shared by the swaggering, raunchy Onstage Janis and the vulnerable, private Janis, the dualism experienced by popular performers during this upheaval finds potent realization. Janis found the good times in her singing, and let the good times roll, although she came to feel herself “a victim of my own insides.” She pushed herself to a an incredible degree of vocal intensity.
0 kommentar(er)
