What I liked
Because LA, I don’t go out as often as I should. Traffic is never ever ever your friend, and its evil sibling, parking, adds an extra dimension of hostility to the mix. It took me 44 minutes to traverse the 9.7 miles that Google Maps falsely prognosticated would take 32 minutes. [For those of you keeping score at home, a Komodo dragon could have covered that distance faster than my Honda.] Long story short, I arrived at 21:33 for a performance that had been scheduled for 21:30, and the cashier said that the performance was sold out. I didn’t whine, I didn’t cry, I just asked if I could leave the performer a note. But bless her, the woman manning (personning? staffing?) the list at Sacred Fools Theatre Company didn’t go quiet into that good night, and discovered a seat for me, in the second row, no less.
I am SO GRATEFUL for her extra effort. [Ed. Note: I later found out her name is Erika Rose.]
Full disclosure: Richard is a Facebook friend whom I had not met – in fact, had never even seen perform — until this evening, but he is pals with some folks who are near and dear, and we have chatted amiably enough that not only would he invite me to his show, but I would actually go.
The one-man show/song cycle, 12 BARS (about drinking establishments, not units of musical time), was delightful, and I would recommend it unreservedly, full stop. In fact, I DO recommend it unreservedly, full stop. But it’s over, so you can’t see it. Nyah-nyah. Sorry. That was cruel.
Great songwriters are by necessity great storytellers. And Richard is a great songwriter. If you’re looking for reference points, Randy Newman, Rupert Holmes, and Ray Davies are good markers for triangulation. Not only does he share with them a fondness for language, a terrific sense of humour, and world-class observational skills, but he also has a command of pop musical idioms that is impressive in both its breadth and depth.
His homage to Édouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” conveyed a poignancy reminiscent of poets Billy Collins and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in their responses to Goya (“Candle Hat” and “In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See . . ., respectively). But this was no academic exercise by any means. Plenty of laughs, a little outright silliness (one short tune about being nostalgic for the days when we were nostalgic leaps to mind), and a compressed history of the last forty or so years (both personal and societal) found their way into the performance.
It’s hard to pick a favourite from the evening, but the tune about the twenty-something-surfer-girl-turned-forty-something-bartender has to rank up at the top for me. Tempus fugit looms large over us boomers, as it deserves to.
And while I would not presume to hazard a guess about Richard’s internal state, the fact that he crafted for the Fringe Festival this multi-decade retrospective of his life seen through the prism of bars brings to mind the words of another excellent writer, Raymond Chandler: “That’s the difference between a champ and a knife thrower. The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can’t be sure. But when he can no longer throw the high hard one, he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He doesn’t just walk off the mound and weep.”
Richard Levinson is at the point in his life where he has presumably come to terms with the fact that he’s never going to win a Nobel Prize, like Dylan. He’s never going to have a #1 pop hit, like Taylor Swift. And when he rides in a limousine, chances are he’ll have been the one who has paid for it. But tonight, the artist, the craftsman, the poet, the entertainer threw his heart, connected with the audience, and created a performance that left everyone in the room richer for its existence. And to paraphrase Harley Quinn in her best moment from Suicide Squad, “We’re artists. It’s what we do.”
What I didn't like
Where was the CD for me to buy on the way out? Or the card with the URL for the Spotify stream? And can we have a 13th bar?
My overall impression
Randy Newman meets Songs in the Key of Life (the actual things, not the Stevie Wonder album) in this one-man tribute to that magical venue where alcohol and strangers meet.
