‘Sweet Street’ is heavenly to watch thanks to heavy use of Cohen songs
All artists need a muse, and it’s even better when that muse just happens to be quite possibly the musician-poet of our time. No offense to the great Bob Dylan, but Leonard Cohen’s aching, masterfully calibrated odes to love and loss might just cinch the deal.
The ingenious idea employed by “Sweet Street,” the latest work by New Phoenix on the Park, is to weave several of Cohen’s songs into the story of several people who patronize a Buffalo soup kitchen. Eventually, the sad tales of how they ended up there jibe perfectly with the ministories of Cohen’s songbook. The result is that rare theatrical experience in which music enthusiasts are not left out in the cold.
Elegantly conceived and directed by Richard Lambert, and sung passionately by a well-chosen, ingratiating cast (with a superb assist from music director Michael Hake and cellist Kathleen Ashwill), “Sweet Street” is anything but sweet. Taking its cue from the striking, edgy photography of local artist Milton Rogovin, who has photographed the homeless in a natural state for the last four decades, the characters are hard-bitten individuals from all walks of life.
They include a former factory worker (Marshall Maxwell, whose natural rasp is an aural dead ringer for Cohen) whose life was turned upside down by the downturn of industry in the Queen City; a paraplegic husband (Robb Nesbitt) and his ignored wife (Sharon Strait), once the pillars of the community; a randy prostitute (Julie Kitsley) with designs on a home; and a former athlete (Frank Giambra) whose addictions to women, booze and hard drugs put him in the gutter.
They’re all ominously framed by a TV reporter (Linda Stein), who seems to want to capture a third Emmy by highlighting their plight, but therein lies another surprise.
As one can gather from such a synopsis, “Sweet Street” isn’t exactly a picnic. Its depiction of street living is often unsparing, the mood is somber to say the least, but it never becomes a defeatist production to witness. Running a taut 60 minutes, the proceedings skirt overt sentimentality by presenting the stories in overlapping fashion, and director Lambert’s nimble flow does not allow for a lot of self-pity, often the downfall of “message” theater.
But it’s the musical interludes, which showcase Cohen’s glorious melodies and wordplay, that pierce the heart. He provides an invaluable assist to any artistic endeavor — movies as far-ranging as “Natural Born Killers” to “Shrek” have caught on to this notion — and his dreamy, brittle soundscapes are beautifully presented in “Sweet Street.”
Every song is a treat, but special mention must go to Strait’s stripped-down “Famous Blue Raincoat,” Jennifer Fitzery’s heartrending rendition of “Song of Bernadette,” and most movingly, Nesbitt’s guitar solo of “Bird on a Wire,” certainly the show’s high point in its simple, unfussy, completely heartbreaking meditation on nature.
Even the show’s sly final reveal seems to imply that the music of Cohen is equivalent to the idea of heaven, and after hearing these tunes so affectingly enacted, one can’t help but agree wholeheartedly.
Theater Review
“Sweet Street”
★★★
Musical drama presented through Nov. 21 by New Phoenix Theatre
95 Johnson Park.
For information: 853-1334 or www.newphoenixtheatre.com.
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