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NY Cabaret: Ute Lemper in electric, jazzy performance at Café CarlyleBiting themes of sex and politics recall Weimar-era Berlin cabaretBy Lucy KomisarWith her raw, tough, insouciant manner, Ute Lemper calls forth the tradition of the Berlin cabaret of the 1920s and 30s. No soupy little “I love you” crooning here. Lemper’s repertoire is the stuff of political and social satire about war, corrupt power and sex. Wearing a black sheath and occasionally twisting a red boa that sets off her sleek red hair, she brings an electric, jazzy energy to her performance at the Café Carlyle.
She has a rich, honeyed, exuberant soprano, spiced with wildness, sometimes sultry, usually demanding. It turns words into imaginary picture stories. Lemper resurrects a favorite political song from the Weimar cabaret and underlines how relevant it is today: “Let’s get this country back on track and get the troops back from Iraq!” Then, “Liar liar liar, I’m sick and tired of lying for you.” The song is ''Munchhausen,'' lyrics by Hollander, and the storyteller is the Baron Munchhausen, an infamous liar. She sings almost angrily, “I saw a land that hated war/ and melted all its weapons down and built a boat of love/ Liar, liar, liar.” Then the refrain, ''Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar / Truth is hard and tough as nails/ That's why we need fairy tales.'' I though the show’s best number, of that same genre, was a powerful and rousing rendition of the Brecht/Weill “Army song”: “Let’s all go balmy, live off the army.” Lemper says she grew up the sixties and seventies and started singing Weill in the eighties. The first decades, of course, were times of social turmoil, while the latter was the reactionary era of Reagan in the U.S., Kohl in Germany and Thatcher in the UK. Quite appropriate to bring Weill back now, in a new period of American militarism. “Blue Angels and Demons.” Ute Lemper. Café Carlyle, Carlyle Hotel, 35 E. 76 St. at Madison Ave. Tues-Sat 8:45 pm, Fri & Sat 10:45 pm. Dinner from 7:30. Cover $75 Tue-Thur; $85 Fri-Sat. No minimum. Through Feb. 25, 2006. 212-744-1600. http://www.thecarlyle.com. Photo by Paul Massey/Frank Spooner Pictures. |
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Sex
in her songs is raunchy, but on her own terms, and the words are often
satirical. In Kurt Weill’s double entendre “Black Market,” she sings Friedrich
Hollander’s lyrics: “You buy my goods, my goods are hot,” followed by the jazzy
“Naughty Lola.” But, again Hollander, she raises the battle for emancipation,
proclaiming that, “Women have had it up to here” in the 1927 “Chuck Out All The
Men!” And if she has them, she will be in charge. “I am a Vamp” is an ode to
manipulation and domination. She teases: “I hit my men and strike them down and
then I bake them in a pie.”
