BY LAURA BIEMMI, TRENDS EDITOR
New Worlds tour
Bill Murray, Jan Vogler and Friends
Riverside Theatre, 7 November
Two types of people went to see Bill Murray, Jan Vogler and Friends on their New Worlds tour.
There were those who went to see famous actor and comedian Bill Murray, with the music on offer as a pleasant yet perhaps distracting side-dish. Then, there were those who were excited to experience a night of literature and music, perhaps keen to be in close proximity with the mega-fame of Murray, yet who would have attended such a night regardless of who was headlining.
Though I love Groundhog Day, I found myself in the latter camp, wondering in the lead-up to the event how the unusual night would cater to the diverse audience.
It was apparent right away that the audience was in great musical company. Cellist Jan Vogler, violinist Mira Wang, and pianist Vanessa Perez cultivated a tight-knit piano trio whilst also taking turns to shine as soloists in the works of Schubert, Ravel, Piazzolla, and Gershwin, amongst others. Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 1 was brimming with clarity and balance, each line exact in their textural proportions. Perez relished her rhythmically driven lines in Piazzolla’s Oblivion and excerpts from Bernstein’s West Side Story whilst simmering with restless energy in Piazzolla’s Muerte de Angel.
Vogler’s performances of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major and Saint-Saens’ The Swan were whimsical and intimate, rendering the expanse of the Riverside Theatre a warm, personal space. Where Vogler closed the space between performer and audience, Wang threw it open with her explosive and evocative playing; the Blues from Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 easily the musical highlight of the night.
Initially, the balance between music and literature was harmonious. Murray, the gifted actor he is, was able to bring to life the poems and prose of the evening as his musical colleagues created their own musical narratives; Bach’s Cello Suite was beautifully woven into the musings of Ernest Hemingway, and Schubert’s Piano Trio proved a great pairing for an excerpt of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer.
At this point in the evening, the aim of the game seemed to be a gathering of like-minded, artistic individuals seeking a union between music and literature. This quickly devolved into what can only be described as muddled chaos. No one could begrudge Murray’s decision to sing a couple of songs; his voice was unrefined rather than pleasant, and he certainly brought a great deal of comedy to the music of Gershwin and Bernstein (assuming, of course, that that was the aim). However, his apparent unwillingness to integrate into the musical structures his colleagues were creating was distracting; Murray’s singing was constantly out of time, completely disregarding established tempi and pushing the ensemble forward in an uncomfortable manner. Considering this tour has been established for some time now, Murray’s lack of ensemble skills spoke not to the unfamiliarity with the material and his musical colleagues, but to an arrogance and disregard for the process of musical collaboration. After all, who is the one bringing in the ticket sales?
Even when Murray was not singing, his performance felt highly uncomfortable. Murray told the New York Times the show was a “collision of America and Europe” and it’s been further celebrated for “the bridges that have been built between America and Europe”. But make no mistake; America was of the most concern here, with European artistic tokens sprinkled throughout a predominately American program. In today’s political landscape, where the global community looks upon the United States and sighs in concern, a celebration of American culture can become a minefield. Unfortunately, it seemed Murray failed dismally here. His decision to read excerpts from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn yielded far too many controversial racial slurs to be considered a thought-provoking literary experience. Regardless of how one interprets Twain’s book, Murray, as a white man, should not have read those particular “n” words out loud, and certainly not to an auditorium full of (paying) people in a country with their own complex history of racism and oppression. Many around me visibly flinched, and even prompted some to walk out (though, to be fair, walk-outs were pretty constant throughout the last hour). The entire issue is far too complex to unpack here, but the theme of America did not mesh well with the sight of a rich, white old man being paid to recite racial slurs to a full theatre. Not even Vogler’s beautiful playing of Moon River could lessen the impact of such an experience.
From my seat at the back of the Riverside Theatre, I was able to witness a curious event in the last half-hour of the show. As previously mentioned, walk-outs were a constant phenomenon. Whether some couldn’t stand the music, the prose, or the time (more than two hours without an interval can become quite gruelling), people constantly filtered out of the theatre and into the night. And yet, upon the ensemble concluding their show, much of the audience leapt to their feet in a rapturous standing ovation.
Such a highly divisive reaction to the performance was, in my opinion, showcased primarily by the price of seating; those closer to the stage who paid the biggest bucks to see Bill Murray were simply overwhelmed by his presence, falling at the feet of this Hollywood superstar. Those of us up the back the who had paid significantly less for their tickets weren’t as fussed, and the majority of walkouts hailed from this particular region of the theatre. So perhaps my initial proposition was incorrect. There were indeed two types of people who went to see Bill Murray; those who wanted to see Bill Murray regardless of what words tumbled from his famous mouth, and those who were much more critically engaged in what was on offer for the evening’s entertainment.
Images supplied. Credit: Peter Rigaud.
