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A classy tribute act to the Seventies' wildest rock and roll child that leaves nothing behind.Summary
Rating
Excellent
It would be a mistake to judge A Night with Janis Joplin against the benchmarks of West End or Broadway musicals. Musical theatre it is not. There is little to no acting and very basic swing and hip-swaying by the backing trio, but the performers’ first-rate singing and the energy of the live band simply blows you away.
This is the London leg of a world-wide touring production depicting Janis Joplin’s atrociously brief musical career, told through her songs and her own voice narrating between tracks.
The set-up is that of an intimate concert night, with Joplin (Mary Bridget Davies) addressing the current audience as herself in the weeks before she died of a heroin overdose. We know she is using heavy drugs at that point as she tells it like it is, while also confiding that she intends to sort her life out.
In her own telling, her musical education starts in the childhood bedroom shared with her sister Laura, in Port Arthur, Texas, where they would listen together to ‘Little Girl Blue’, by Richard Rodgers (of Rodgers and Hammerstein) in the semi-dark. It continues in her teen years, when she’s negotiating cleaning chores in the house with her siblings, to her mother’s records of Broadway musicals on repeat and at full throttle. She works odd jobs to fund art supplies, feeding her first love, painting, until she gets a gig at a bar, where she lets rip with her own, totally unhinged rendition of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ from Porgy and Bess. She knows then she needs an audience more than anything else and never looks back. During her college years she performs around Austin’s venues, then a cradle of blues, left-wing politics and poetry, until she takes up the offer to leave Texas for San Francisco, where she discovers her rock as well as blues soul.
The songs cover her classic repertoire, including those she penned herself like ‘Kozmic Blues’, ‘Down on Me’, ‘Turtle Blues’,’ Mercedes Benz’, and those by others, but which she made forever her own, as with ‘Piece of my Heart’.
The fixed staging takes us to a smoky, hazy underground den, dimly lit through assorted table lamps and candles scattered at the front of the stage and thick red velvet drapery hanging from what looks like a steel walkway and fire escape staircase. We cannot quite make it out, but the skeleton structure gives the set a split level that serves a key purpose.
The show is, in fact, also a tribute to the blues artists who sang before Joplin and inspired her throughout, all of them women, embodied here by the ‘Joplinaires’ – a superb Kalisha Amaris, Georgia Bradshaw, Choolwe Laina Muntanga and Danielle Steers – who pay tribute to Aretha Franklin, Bessie Smith, Odetta, Etta James and Nina Simone. These are evoked as otherworldly apparitions, dressed in glamorous concert clothes, strutting and belting it out on that upper walkway, lit through the haze so as to appear floating in a dream sequence. The exception is Aretha Franklin, who is very much alive and duets with Janis, sharing her stage.
The chemistry among the excellent band members, the leading singers and between Davis and the lead guitarists is undeniable, a source of electrifying energy and a key reason for the show’s success.
Written and directed by: Randy Johnson
Musical Supervisor and Director: Iestyn Griffiths
A Night with Janis Joplin plays at xx until 28th September. Further information and booking are available here.
