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Vaudeville (1982-83) |
mezzo-soprano, baritone, 2 mimes, 7 players - 38'
American vaudeville produced the cinema's first generation of great comedians, and itself disappeared as a live theatrical genre because of the growing popularity of film as the foremost medium for mass entertainment.
Although primarily remembered as a vehicle for comedy, the vaudeville show was a very diverse spectacle, incorporating elements of circus (animal acts, trapeze artists), 'serious' theatre (lurid melodramas for the most part), opera (showpiece arias) and other things - such as folk dancing - from the various ethnic traditions that were taken by the emigrants from Europe and Asia to America in the nineteenth century. The average show would contain about a dozen speciality acts, in the bigger cities more, and in the country areas less: the lavishness - and in some cases the wholesomeness - of the spectacle were closely linked to local taste and economics.
This piece is a tribute (both from admiration and affection) to the vaudeville show, and additionally takes it as a metaphor for the human condition: the progress of its action linked to the seven ages of man, enacted - in a multiplicity of disguises - by four actors (two singers and two dancers) and seven instrumentalists.
The action takes place on the stage of a theatre - no specific era - and should emphasise 'illusion' (stylised, artificial, even eccentric manners of performance, stage magic, tricks etc.) in preference to reality.
© Michael Finnissy