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Billie Roe
November 16, 2016
For her current show at the Metropolitan Room, “Monopoly,” Billie Roe has fashioned, with the assistance of director Mark Nadler and musical director Steven Ray Watkins, a compelling and affecting spoken-and-sung narrative based on the beloved and long-running board game. She begins by recounting her own childhood memories of often cutthroat family Monopoly games, specifically an annual tournament at her grandparents’ summer cottage on an Upstate New York lake in 1963.The song Roe sings to accompany the reminiscence is “Come On! Let’s Play Monopoly” (Mark Mitchell). Remembering her own strategies for buying houses, hotels, and railroads, and those of her two brothers and their parents, Roe reaches back to the Depression era for “Raisin’ the Rent” (Harold Arlen, Ted Kohler). But soon enough she takes off into the world of speculation about the denizens of those Atlantic City streets and other AC locales dotting the Monopoly board, imagining and enacting their lives.
Starting at the top, on Boardwalk, Roe creates an image of, and then becomes, Mrs. Bibbs, the wife of a mayoral candidate and a fluty but charitable garden club lady. “Hurry! It’s Lovely Up Here” (Burton Lane, Alan Jay Lerner) she urges her still-underground plants. Meanwhile, on the decidedly down-market Baltic Avenue, the widowed and heavily accented Sophie Gernstein is the lone holdout in her apartment building, which is slated for destruction by developers who keep upping the ante, but not high enough for Sophie—yet. In a reflective mood, she summons up two Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson songs from Knickerbocker Holiday: “September Song” and “It Never Was You,” as wistfully as you’ve ever heard them. Later, in a more playful mood, Sophie trills “Yellow Beach Umbrella” (Craig Doerge, Judy Henske). Roe’s ability to change characters so quickly is remarkable. So are her quick-change adjustments to the tenor of their songs.
A hipster in Marvin Gardens has a raw “Easy Money” (Rickie Lee Jones) as her mantra. A homeless woman in Community Chest employs a Tom Waits song to desperately implore “Kiss Me.” And a character called Rose, in Free Parking, movingly works out her apparent daddy issues in a triptych of songs. Nadler and Watkins shared arranging duties, and I hope they both had a hand in Roe/Rose’s stunning medley of “Fortunate Son” (John Fogerty), “Help” (Lennon & McCartney), and “Dance with My Father” (Luther Vandross, Richard Marx). Another medley, of “More” (Stephen Sondheim) and “Money” (Roger Waters) is a monument to the greed of many real estate developers—and, let’s face it, Monopoly players.
Throughout her show, Roe as writer, actor or singer is a modulator supreme. She can belt with the best of them, and of course does when it’s called for. But, equally, she can be soft and subtle, especially when plumbing for nuance. Among other gems of this show, you might feel you are hearing “September Song” or “Dance with My Father” for the first time—and not just because we’re more used to a man singing those two songs.
“Monopoly: Singing the Lives from Baltic Avenue to Boardwalk”
Metropolitan Room – August 16, September 9, October 15, November 20
Robert Windeler is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Mary Pickford, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, and Burt Lancaster. As a West Coast correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine, he covered movies, television and music, and he was an arts and entertainment critic for National Public Radio. He has contributed to a variety of other publications, including TV Guide, Architectural Digest, The Sondheim Review, and People, for which he wrote 35 cover stories. He is a graduate of Duke University in English literature and holds a masters in journalism from Columbia, where he studied critical writing with Judith Crist. He has been a theatre critic for Back Stage since 1999, writes reviews for BistroAwards.com, and is a member of The Players and the American Theatre Critics Association.
For her current show at the Metropolitan Room, “Monopoly,” Billie Roe has fashioned, with the assistance of director Mark Nadler and musical director Steven Ray Watkins, a compelling and affecting spoken-and-sung narrative based on the beloved and long-running board game. She begins by recounting her own childhood memories of often cutthroat family Monopoly games, specifically an annual tournament at her grandparents’ summer cottage on an Upstate New York lake in 1963.The song Roe sings to accompany the reminiscence is “Come On! Let’s Play Monopoly” (Mark Mitchell). Remembering her own strategies for buying houses, hotels, and railroads, and those of her two brothers and their parents, Roe reaches back to the Depression era for “Raisin’ the Rent” (Harold Arlen, Ted Kohler). But soon enough she takes off into the world of speculation about the denizens of those Atlantic City streets and other AC locales dotting the Monopoly board, imagining and enacting their lives.
Would love to secure two tickers for Saturday performance .
Worked with Billie in Atlantic City, she’s amazing!