Martin C. Hurt

June 29, 2016

Martin C. HurtWith his new show, “You Inspire Me,” singer/actor Martin C. Hurt wanted to pay tribute to songwriters Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf. He had heard “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” and fallen in love with their best-known song, as did many of us upon our first exposure to it. Musical legend has it that Landesman approached Wolf and said she was toying with the idea of adapting “April is the cruellest month…,” the famous opening of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” to the jazz idiom, to which he replied, “Go for it.” And did she ever!

Hurt began to research the writers and discovered the treasure trove they left to the Great American Songbook. Lyricist Landesman and composer Wolf certainly deserve any celebration or accolade that can be given. Their songs are consistently smart, funny, moving, and literate, and they swing like crazy. Landesman’s brittle, self-aware, incisive words perfectly captured the ’60s revolution of rejection of norms and “old-fashioned” style. She wrote the way hip New Yorkers of the time talked, and her poetic lyrics were perfectly matched by Wolf’s sometimes jaunty, sometimes noir-ish, always unexpected melodies.

When I am teaching a performance class, I try to impress on students early on that there is a difference between liking to hear a song, and wanting to sing a song. Disappointingly, this show is a textbook case of that idea. Hurt is a good singer and would no doubt have success with another program of songs; here, however, it was like an artist proficient in pen-and-ink drawing attempting to use oil paints instead—the outlines might be recognizable and at times even pleasing, but the specificity for which he was known would be lacking. He sang some of the hippest material ever written as if it were theatre songs by Jerry Herman—big, open, legit, square singing that undercut the wit, humor, and understated passion of the words, and failed to capture the modernity of the music. Few composers swung more than Fran Landesman’s collaborators (Wolf chief among them), but there was no swing in Hurt’s singing; he seemed to stumble off track at the slightest hint of swing. The band, trying to bridge this gap, played in a kind of limbo between Broadway and Birdland that was at best painless and at worst plodding. It did not show either the material or themselves off to best advantage. Music director, arranger, pianist Warren Helms, bassist Tim Metz, and percussionist Eric Borghi were passable and would probably have been much more so in other circumstances. Metz had the best musical moment of the evening with his solo on “Spring…”

The squareness of the delivery was mirrored in the patter for the show, which was very written and came across as too much lecture and not enough conversation. Certainly there is room for a bit of historical and biographical reference, but the songs really do speak for themselves, and when he spoke, Hurt never displayed any personal connection to what the songs were saying, other than his admiration for their artistry.

The tongue-twisting fun of “It Isn’t So Good It Couldn’t Get Better” was lost, as was the stiff-upper-lip sadness of “There Are Days When I Don’t Think of You at All” as it became, instead, an obvious tearjerker. Even the seemingly simple comic delights of “It’s Nice Weather for Ducks” require a more assured delivery than he was able to muster, and his decision to do it perched atop the piano did not help. His take on the big number, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” worked better than I would have expected after what had come before. While he didn’t quite pull it off, he revealed a thoughtful, personal side that I wish had been there earlier. This “new and improved” Martin C. Hurt was even more effective on his closer, “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men.” I wish that his director, Richard Sabellico, had worked more closely with him to be as present in the rest of the show and to find the right tone for Landesman and Wolf’s material.

“You Inspire Me”
Don’t Tell Mama  –  June 17

Avatar

About the Author

Gerry Geddes has conceived and directed a number of musical revues—including the Bistro- and MAC Award-winning "Monday in the Dark with George" and "Put On Your Saturday Suit-Words & Music by Jimmy Webb"—and directed many cabaret artists, including André De Shields, Helen Baldassare, Darius de Haas, and drag artist Julia Van Cartier. He directs "The David Drumgold Variety Show," currently in residence at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, and has produced a number of recordings, including two Bistro-winning CDs. He’s taught vocal performance at The New School, NYU, and London’s Goldsmith’s College and continues to conduct private workshops and master classes. As a writer and critic, he has covered New York’s performing arts scene for over 40 years in both local and national publications; his lyrics have been sung by several cabaret and recording artists. Gerry is an artist in residence at Pangea, and a regular contributor to the podcast “Troubadours & Raconteurs.” He just completed a memoir of his life in NYC called “Didn’t I Ever Tell You This?”