And By the Way, This One's Pink: Night Two of The Wall at La Esquina
A Tribute/Interpretation of Pink Floyd's The Wall by a Bunch of Local Musicians and Actors, Put On by the Urban Culture Project
Saturday, May 3
La Esquina
Better Than: Thinking about how bloated, egomaniacal and stupid most of the original members of Pink Floyd have been since day one.
By JASON HARPER
Before :
After:
Photos by John Bersuch. Go to his Flickr for more.
That's just Brodie Rush, doing one of his nuttier turns as the psychologically disintegrating character of Pink in The Wall, a rousing rendition of which some locals put on this past Friday and Saturday and are putting on at 8 p.m. tonight at a building called La Esquina.
The sound of an exhaust fan in the side of a building adjacent to the parking lot, coupled with the rotor noise of a not-too-distant ghetto bird set the perfect, military-industrial soundtrack Saturday night outside La Esquina, an office-ish building just north of Southwest Boulevard. By about 9:30, the seats inside were mostly filled with people chattering, fanning themselves with programs and drinking free cans of PBR.
At just after 10 p.m., the big styrofoam wall between the audience (smack-dab in front of the first row) and the stage slid open and the band launched into a loud, cathartic "In the Flesh." From there on out, the band's note-perfect, tremendously soulful recreation of an album I memorized in middle school was mannah to my inner 14-year-old. I mean, these guys nailed it. Transcendently. Lead guitarist Chris Meck of the Gaslights (who woulda guessed?) stole the show with solos that would've made Gilmour's mum cry. Bassist Jeff Harshbarger showed a whole new blast of talent when he sang the chorus to "Comfortably Numb" and did a Monty-Python-on-PCP turn as Judge Worm in "The Trial" (both while playing bass). The other musicians were great, too, and deserve shoutouts: Mark Lowrey on keys, Billy Brimblecom on drums and Cody Wyoming on rhythm guitar and vocals.
Not being much of a patron of theater, I focused most of my attention on the band, which was set up halfway in shadow off stage right. Clad in glammy rags and white face paint with patchily buzzed hair that screamed "mental ward," Brodie looked a bit like a batshit Brian Eno. His voice handled the parts no problem, and to his credit, he didn't ham up his performance in the least. He just leaned back and wailed. To paraphrase Lou Reed, he kept his head even when he was losing his head. Or shaving head: The pictures with this entry are from when Rush grabbed a hair trimmer and lawnmowered his head during the climactic guitar solo of "Comfortably Numb," leaving just enough patches of hair to have something to shave off at tonight's show.
The cast, which included Late Night stalwarts Ron Megee, Corrie Van Ausdal, David Wayne Reed and Kimberely Queen in various roles, worked with minimal costumes and props, relying heavily on movement and freaky facial expressions to interpret the story. I say "interpret" rather than "tell," because, as with most rock operas, The Wall is basically a grandiose song opera with a batty, abstract plot. Something about a marriage, the war, being a schoolboy, sudden onset of rock stardom and fame, sluts, drugs, alienation from everything, more drugs, mental breakdown, fascism, more mental breakdown, being tried and sentenced to something and then having wall torn down. Roger Waters really could've used some help from Sondheim dreaming the whole thing up. As one of my friends theorizes about most of Pink Floyd, at some point Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright must have one day sat down and asked themselves, "What can we do that will appeal the most to American teenage boys?"
This UCP performance -- indeed, the whole Under the Influence series of classic rock tributes -- seems to be appealing to boys young and old, male and female. One doofus in the audience even lit up a joint during the show, twice. It was kind of shocking in such a small space. The second time, Rush was on stage barking out the fascist-tyrant rampage of the second act's "In the Flesh," and without breaking character ,he bellowed "Who's smoking a joint!?"
Here was the order of performance , to the best of my memory (left program at home) got it:
Act 1
In the Flesh
When the Tigers Broke Free (prerecorded, played over PA)
Another Brick In the Wall, pt. 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick In the Wall, pt. 2
Mother (sung by this little boy named Cooper*, who was GREAT)
Goodbye Blue Sky
Young Lust
One of my Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Birck In the Wall, pt. 3
Goodbye, Cruel World
Act 2
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
In the Flesh
Run Like Hell
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
If you're going tonight, the $10 ticket is well worth it. Get there close to 7; it'll probably sell out. Leave the reefer at home.
Critic's Notebook
Personal Bias: Not to hurt anyone's feelings, but due to experiences in a past life, I tend to stay away from live theater unless it's a top-notch professional production, so if you went to this show and can be objective (or credibly subjective) about the whole acting side of it, feel more than free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Random Detail: If, like me, you got burned out on actually listening to most of Pink Floyd's catalogue by age 18, check out David Gilmour's latest solo album, On An Island, from 2006. It's not half bad, and it's great for napping to.
By the Way: If they catch you in the back seat trying to pick her locks, they're gonna send you home to mother in a cardboard box.
*correction: Earlier, this review specified the actor who played Young Pink and sang "Mother" as Chris Fielder, who did play Young Pink on Friday and Monday but not Saturday. The boy who played Young Pink on Saturday was Cooper J.
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