I am back from THE BLUE FLOWER, which is an experiment in film and live theatre in which neither wins many points. It has an excellent cast, but it's poor Brecht - at one point there's very literal qute from "Mack the Knife," making me wonder if the Weill Foundation is aware of this, but it's like watching a lot of skilled theatre professionals masturbate and make much ado about nothing. The story, about a "famous artist" (1899-1955), seems to also be a history of Europe from Mayerling to WW 2, but the music all sounds like it was written this morning on a country western fix, with lots of slide guitar, power ballads, a couple of beautiful ensembles, and a lot of unintelligible lyrics. The 8-piece band was quite good and some of the arrangements very interesting.
The problem is a story that jumps around in time about four Germans whom one never has an emotional investment with. Too much is narrated, too much is on film - I was amazed at a lot of synchronization between band, actors and film , but at times the film is more involving than the staging and it gets in the way of the staging. I wanted to like it, and I was very moved by the last couple of scenes, but the pretentious "bug" cabaret in Act Two, after an equally ridiculous Dada cabaret scene in Act One, made we want to leave immediately. The first act ended on a beautiful lament, but I didn't give a single damn about the plight of the character singing it.
I kept waiting for someone to ask, "how did you like our Brecht parody?"
