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Billie Roe
June 10, 2013
“1978 NYC Underground”
Metropolitan Room – May 15 – 18
During the closing remarks in her latest offering, Billie Roe tells us that she’s wanted to do a Tom Waits show for a long time. Well, the gestation period may have been long, but the baby is beautiful and healthy. While all of the musical selections in Roe’s program were written by Waits, she does a lot more than present a show of his songs. Rather, she creates an entire Tom Waits world—which can be a fairly dark place. However, while Waits may be cynical, he is not a nihilist; I’m inclined to categorize him as a romantic cynic—if there is such a thing—because his writing shows glimpses of joy, and like flashes of light these penetrate the darkness, revealing the possibility of something better.
Roe navigates Waits’s moods and attitudes masterfully, never losing control for an instant. She can change from eerily sinister to cheerily sunny in a millisecond, and she’s capable of conveying conflicting feelings with a single look. With her at every step of the emotional and dramatic journey are the eloquent arrangements by musical director Tracy Stark and the instrumental accompaniment—what a rich palette the band paints with.
The show is set in 1978, the year Roe moved to New York, and the songs are woven into a tapestry of her personal experiences that year. So artful is her writing that not only does the period come alive, there are times when if you weren’t familiar with a song, you might be hard-put to say whether the dialogue leading into it was her narration or the song’s verse, spoken. Equally commanding as an actress and a writer, she is every bit as impressive as a singer, boasting a deep, imposing voice that, like Waits’s writing, has lovely, delicate overtones. Throughout the proceedings, Roe’s combined talents draw us into the Waits/Roe universe and keep us there until some time after the show has ended.
An anecdote about meeting a cowboy on the subway segues seamlessly into “Johnsburg, Illinois,” presented as though the cowboy were telling about his girlfriend back home. Another line of dialogue then takes us to “Union Square,” a rock blues that portrays a harsh view of life, which Roe’s (and the band’s) performance matches in hard-edged grittiness. On the ineffably sad “Altar Boy,” she conveys the very essence of worn out and run-down. Comments on the Guardian Angels take her to “Romeo Is Bleeding,” which becomes not so much a song as a superbly acted musical melodrama, and recollections of the Bowery as it was 35 years ago lead to the poignant “Soldier’s Things.” A pairing of “Dead and Lovely” and “Make It Rain,” which Roe aligns with the story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, is stunning, especially the second song, in which rain serves as a metaphor for relief from the pain of being without one’s love, and which Roe acts magnificently, as though inconsolably overcome with anguish.
And so it is with the remaining half-dozen songs in the show. Though I’ve focused on the serious material, the evening is certainly not without humor—especially the good-natured wit in Roe’s narration. (Mind you, funny does not imply frivolous.) The marvelous musicians are Tracy Stark (piano), Peter Calo (guitar), Saadi Zain (bass), Roxy Coss (woodwinds), and David Silliman (percussion). Lennie Watts directed. While I was not present during the enterprise’s development, all evidence points to its having been the best type of collaboration, one in which all creative forces contribute to a common objective: to realize the star’s vision.
This engagement was Roe’s prize for winning last year’s MetroStar Talent Challenge. I was a MetroStar judge, and during judges’ feedback near the end of the competition, I said to her, “Billie, you’re one hell of an artist.” Now I can add, “Billie, this is one hell of a show.”
Roy Sander has been covering cabaret and theatre for over thirty years. He’s written cabaret and theatre reviews, features, and commentary for seven print publications, most notably Back Stage, and for CitySearch on the Internet. He covered cabaret monthly on “New York Theatre Review” on PBS TV, and cabaret and theatre weekly on WLIM-FM radio. He was twice a guest instructor at the London School of Musical Theatre. A critic for BistroAwards.com, he is also the site’s Reviews Editor; in addition, he is Chairman of the Advisory Board of MAC.
During the closing remarks in her latest offering, Billie Roe tells us that she’s wanted to do a Tom Waits show for a long time. Well, the gestation period may have been long, but the baby is beautiful and healthy. While all of the musical selections in Roe’s program were written by Waits, she does a lot more than present a show of his songs. Rather, she creates an entire Tom Waits world—which can be a fairly dark place. However, while Waits may be cynical, he is not a nihilist; I’m inclined to categorize him as a romantic cynic—if there is such a thing—because his writing shows glimpses of joy, and like flashes of light these penetrate the darkness, revealing the possibility of something better.