Getting acquainted with Jacques Brel

Lesley Stones
02/18/2010 13:14:41


Lesley Stones finally catches up on a musical secret that everyone else seems to know.

Brel, who's Brel? I hear you ask.

Oh, so you already know. Perhaps it's just me then who had never heard of Jacques Brel before. But it turns out that I do know some of his songs, which are being performed with absolute panache in Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Quite why I'm familiar with a song about drunken, brawling, whoring sailors in Amsterdam is a mystery. But I've certainly heard it before. And as several other songs began there was also a frisson of familiarity about them.

Brel must have had quite a life. His lyrics are stories as much as songs, and tell of love gone and love gone wrong, war and death, drinking and dying. There's even a song about losing his virginity in an army brothel, although that traumatic experience clearly didn't put him off women for long.

They're lyrics you really have to listen to, but the listening is a pure pleasure with four excellent singers and a perfect backing band. Some of the songs are still in their native French, and sound terribly sophisticated even if you're struggling to comprehend as well as listen. Most have been translated into English, and they're wordy, clever lyrics that spin fascinating tales of human frailties.

The stage setting has a mellow cabaret feel, with rich curtains and few chairs and a table for the props. The lighting by Jane Gosnell is absolutely perfect, and so good that you actually notice the atmosphere it creates. When veteran showman Graham Clarke jumps onto a box to sing The Statue his features become almost grotesquely stone-like in the dramatic lighting. In fact Clarke's face is perfectly suited to many of Brel's songs, with his lived-in, worn-out features.

The younger David Chevers is equally suited to the tales about Brel's earlier life, while Chrissy Caine brings a worldy, knowing attitude to songs such as The Old Folks, a moving tale of the decline of man into sadness and senility.

The hit of the show, however, was the brilliant Deneel Uys. Her mischievous face is wonderful for the quirky Carousel and suitably anxious for Timid Frieda. When the opening bars for Ne Me Quitte Pas began, practically the entire audience gave a flutter of recognition, and the performance by Uys was fabulous. We nearly cried right with her.

That's when the band was at its best too. The whole show demands precision and delicacy from its musicians, and the melancholy double bass adds a moodiness that enhances the words magnificently.

One song runs into the next with no dialogue between, so its not a musical revue as much as a showcase for the songs of one man. That will probably limit its appeal to people already familiar with his work, but considering that the show ran for two decades after it first opened here in the 1970s to become the most enduring musical revue in South African history, that should guarantee a pretty enormous audience.

Whether many newcomers will take a chance and book a ticket for a songwriter they've never heard of is debatable, but I'm certainly glad that I did.


Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris runs at Sandton's Theatre on the Square until March 13.