At the end of Joey Ariasâ opening night sold-out performance of his Billie Holiday Centennial Concert at the REDCAT, the audience leapt to its feet in a standing ovation. The collective seal of approval brought to mind the chillingly brilliant observation made by Fran Lebowitz in Public Speaking, the 2010 Martin Scorsese directed HBO documentary about her. She tells him, âNo one talks about it anymore, but when people did talk about [the cultural devastation wrought by AIDS,] they talked about what artists were lost, but they never talked about the audience that was lostâŚ. There was such a high level of connoisseurship of everything⌠That made the culture better. A very discerning audience, an audience with a high level of connoisseurship, is just as important to the culture as artists. Itâs exactly as important. Now, we donât have any kind of discerning audience.â
The crowdâs rapturous response to Ariasâ bafflingly unfocused and often simply awful performance was proof of Lebowitzâ argument.
Photo courtesy REDCAT Theater.
The night began promisingly. Arias entered from the wings wearing an all-black outfit, including a diaphanous wrap that looked like a spiderâs web when he spread his arms, balancing on sky-high stilettoes, and sporting Holidayâs trademark gardenia behind one ear. Backlit so that we only saw him in outline form, the gardenia being the one easily discernible component of his outfit, he kicked off the set with âDonât Explain.â Immediately apparent was the sublimity of the backing band â Matt Ray (piano), David Piltch (acoustic bass), Robert Perkins (drums), Maiani da Silva (violin), and Isaiah Gage (cello). Ray, the music director, smoothly led the troupe through paces that fused virtuosity and nuance, deftly navigating uptempo tracks, like an especially swinging âThem There Eyes,â and somber musical landscapes.
The problem was Arias, who is decades deep in his homage to Holiday. Thereâs no doubt that he captures something of her idiosyncratic approach to the lyric â coming in behind the beat, keeping the listener on her toes by refusing to swim easily into the melody, bending and ending notes in left-of-center phrasing and enunciation. He caught the slivered, fractured tone that gives Holidayâs most measured and assured performance a knife-to-the-heart quality. But he also interjected non-stop hiccups, squeals and yelps â often at wildly inappropriate moments â as he made his way through the Holiday songbook. He was obvious and on-the-nose in his accompanying physical gestures, which quickly lapsed into caricature. Mid-way through âStrange Fruit,â he bent at the waist and sobbed, more affected than affecting, and at dire odds with the cool composure of Holidayâs gut-wrenching take on the anti-lynching song, which is exactly what makes it so devastating. That was only the most egregious example of his often overwrought spin on the material.
Throughout the show, he turned Holidayâs speaking drawl into a mush-mouth parody played for cheap laughs, turning her into a familiar figure from old-school gay cultureâs piano bar/nightclub drag queen performers: the bawdy, blowsy, boozy figure alternately combative and flirtatious with her audience. Two or three times he hiked his skirt to reveal his garters; a couple of times he squatted and spread his thighs, flashing the crowd. He vamped diva-style for the camera phones of audience members filming him. It wasnât so much breaking character as performing an unfocused mish-mash of a character that has nothing at all to do with anything at all about Holiday.
Itâs understandable that, after so many years of performing Holidayâs songs in Holiday drag, he might be a bit bored with his subject, somewhat on cruise-control. And no one would want to see a show in which the iconic jazz singer is performed from behind a veil of entombed reverence. That wouldnât do justice to the tough, earthy, funny, no-bullshit woman Holiday really was (and who has gotten buried beneath the pure victim guise in which sheâs been shrouded.) A concert in which the undeniably vocally gifted Arias simply sang Holidayâs songs, letting his propensity to belt (Holiday was no belter) or let fly his more conventionally technically powerful voice, mightâve been a better option. He could still slip in the Holiday-style tics and flourishes, of course, but it wouldnât seem such a frequently grotesque interpretation of the Lady and her music when he lapses into whatever the hell that was he was doing opening night.
Joey Arias is performing at the REDCAT through Sunday, November 22. All shows are sold-out.
