Mx. Justin Vivian Bon

June 18, 2012

54 Below  –  Mondays, June 4 – July 9; Friday-Saturday July 20-21

Justin Vivian Bond comes on stage at 54 Below in an elegant long black dress slit up the left side to reveal a swell pair of gams. V’s hair is long and blonde, and v’s jewelry and elbow-length gloves are stylish. V starts to sing—a straight-arrow baritone. Though the lyric deals with consequential relationship issues, v’s approach to the song is night-clubby light and bright. If you weren’t familiar with Justin Bond—or, now, Justin Vivian Bond—you might think you were in for a frivolous evening of camp. But you’d be terribly, terribly wrong, for what v delivers is a trenchant evening of emotional exploration and intensity mixed with large doses of hilarity and unconventional wisdom. (Honoring Bond’s preference for transgender pronouns, I’m using “v” instead of he or she.)

Not only is Bond a serious artist, v is a strikingly singular one. I know of no other performer who does quite what v does, though three come to mind who, combined, approach v’s particular artistry: the appearance and stage presence of Georgette Dee—and Dee’s not needing to explain or justify performing in a frock; the extraordinarily focused, purposeful, and eloquent song interpretations of the great Tim Fischer; and the quickness and intelligence of Justin Sayre’s humor. (Dee and Fischer are from Germany, so you might not know their work.) Yet Bond boasts all of these qualities and attributes vself.

Bond’s show is a celebration of the very recent release of v’s recording “Silver Wells,” and comprises all of the songs from the album, and then some. It’s an eclectic collection. With Ronee Blakely’s “Dues” from the film Nashville, v affectingly conveys the pain of not being able to “love you the way I used to do.” Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” has so much to say about sibling affection and competitiveness, and Bond does the song full justice. V delivers an expressionistic interpretation of the traditional spiritual “Sinnerman,” giving it an ending tinged with eerie foreboding. Musical director/pianist Thomas Bartlett contributes to the mood by playing the lower register of the piano as though he were plucking a bass. A paragraph could be written about Bartlett, for his accompaniment—sometimes poetic, always impressive, and most important, always sympathetic to and supportive of Bond’s vocal interpretation—makes a strong contribution to the success of the evening. Their pairing is musical symbiosis.

The “prostitute section of the show” has two selections. Bartlett’s arrangement of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Alabama Song” is exceptional—angular and aggressive, except for rolling notes during the chorus, which becomes a reverie—and Bond embraces it completely. And on Mark Etzel’s “Patriot’s Heart,” a harsh, cynical song about a stripper and the men who patronize him, Bond’s penetrating interpretation is compelling. V’s performance of a pairing of songs about AIDS—Benjamin Smoke’s “Clean White Bed” and Melanie Safka’s “Leftover Wine”—is so powerful that v makes anguish and anger mesmerizing. Among the other numbers in the show are a couple of Joni Mitchell songs, a Kate Bush piece about incest and its resulting pregnancy, Billy Barnes’s “Something Cool,” and a few Bond originals.

If most of the musical selections are dark and/or emotionally potent, Bond’s patter—and there’s a good deal of it—is breezy and very, very funny. Some of it is more or less planned, other bits are clearly spontaneous, and some non-sequiturs are journeys to wherever—but these side trips are delightful detours. Some of what v says is edgy, but even its most far-out expressions are rooted in common sense, and underlying it all is Bond’s innate benevolence. Indeed, much could be said about Bond-as-comic, and some of v’s lines are so very quotable—but I’m resisting because I don’t want to spoil your pleasure. (By the way, you’ve likely seen Bond before, for v was the Kiki half of the Tony-nominated duo Kiki and Herb—Kenny Melman being Herb.)

The evening I attended, the show ran 1 hour 40 minutes. If that had been 2 hours 40 minutes it would have been hunky-dory with me.

 

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About the Author

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.