Alive and Well
Youth dies. Life hurts. Love warms.
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Understanding heals. The wounds and balms of the human condition are so commonplace that men eventually experience them without noticing. It is only when art magnifies truth that audiences become aware of it—and of themselves. One of the most powerful magnifiers currently in use is a cabaret show with the unwieldy title, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.
Two years ago, when the show opened in Greenwich Village, the logical response to the title might have been: So what? The songs were written by an obscure Belgian bourgeois-turned-chanteur; they were being sung in the dark basement of the Village Gate by four nobodies. But one of these nobodies was a phosphorescent waif named Elly Stone, who breathed life and passion into Brel's hard-edged depictions of soul v. circumstance. Nearly 1,000 performances later, Jacques Brel is still vibrantly alive and well in New York. On an initial investment of $52,000, four companies of Brel have grossed more than $31 million, and this week audiences in Boston are discovering Elly Stone as she continues to discover the songs—as if for the first time.
When an actress appears in a long run she tends to lose her gusto. This is called getting stale. Once in a long while a performer appears who remains as fresh in the road company as she was on opening night. This is called Elly Stone. Oddly enough, in the early years of her career, Elly seemed a sure showbiz loser. In the '50s she sang her way cross-country with her first husband, an itinerant magician. They slept and nearly froze in a Kansas scrap-car lot; they lived on bananas in Florida; they starved; they split. Elly played club dates and even a carnival—all without recognition. She failed in the Catskills. In a Manhattan boite she appeared briefly with Raconteur Jean Shepherd. "Relax," he told her. "These are the good old days."
The good old days got worse. Elly sang in striptease shows, and understudied Barbra Streisand in I Can Get It for You Wholesale. It was like sending a sparrow in for a hawk. Off-Broadway was a better avenue for her talents. In 1961, she found herself in a little musical entitled O, Oysters! Its author-producer was Eric Blau, a minor poet who was to become her second husband. A ghostwriter by trade (for Mickey Mantle, Jim Brown), Blau had a contagious obsession: Jacques Brel. "I was knocked out when I heard his work," he recalls. "I had never known any songwriter to address himself to the human condition. I began to collect Brel." So did another enthusiast, Composer Mort Shuman, who had assisted at the birth of the rock generation by writing tunes (Viva Las Vegas) for Elvis Presley. Together, Shuman and Blau sifted through Brel's 150-song repertory. They settled on an irreducible 25 for Alive and Well.
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