Songwriter's work resonates with war

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris' 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays, through April 11 Hawai'i Pacific University Theatre, 45-045 Kamehameha Highway, Kane'ohe $18, $14, $3 375-1282

The musical review of Brel's songs calls for four singers, a few musicians and some stools on an otherwise bare stage. Brel's lyrics are so poetically rich — even in translation — that each creates a mini-drama. Director Joyce Maltby and cast demonstrate that the most effective presentation is to let the material speak without overstaging. Each number invites the audience to come inside for fun, poignancy, and even pain.

Michael Burns, Melissa Dylan, Rebecca Maltby and Kevin Yamada are in the ensemble, with two additional singers who appear intermittently. Lyna Doo directs the tiny orchestra, has a couple of solos and joins the full cast numbers. Dennis Proulx is featured on the darker songs. "If We Only Have Love" is saved for the show's finale, and its lyrics offer clues to what may have been Brel's musical legacy.

"We can reach those in pain
"We can heal all our wounds ...
"We can melt all the guns
"And then give the new world
"To our daughters and sons."

The women's voices blend with exquisite feeling on "Old Folks," for whom "it hurts too much to smile ... but life goes on for still another day."

Burns and Yamada portray young men filled with bravado and disrespect for "The Middle Class," pronouncing them to be "just like pigs ... the older they get, the dumber they get ... the fatter they get, the less they regret."

The most memorable pieces evoke the absurdity of war. "Brussels" is a memory of Brel's grandparents when they were young and vibrant, before "ten million guns got loaded and World War I exploded."

He takes a corpse's viewpoint in "Funeral Tango," observing mourners "thinking about the price of my funeral bouquet. What they're thinking isn't nice, 'cause now they'll have to pay."

But the most stunning piece is "Next," using a company visit to a brothel to illustrate the vulgarities of war:

"Naked as sin, an army towel covering my belly.

Some of us blush, somehow, knees turning to jelly."

These songs are strong enough to send you home to look up and savor the lyrics, and may even be reason enough to learn the original French.