Theater Review—

‘Being Alive:’ The Work Of Two Geniuses, Blended Seamlessly

By Julie Stern

WESTPORT — Something exciting and different was offered at Westport Country Playhouse very recently: Writer/performer Billy Porter created something he calls “cultural fusion,” which is a fancy way of saying that he has taken two very different bodies of artistic work — the words and imagery of William Shakespeare, and the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim — blended them together and interpreted them both through the prism of African-American music- from jazz to soul to rhythm and blues to spirituals and gospel to hip hop- in a way that manages to be both autobiographically personal, and universally meaningful.

The resulting work, Being Alive, was offered on the Westport stage August 24 to September 9.

Shakespeare buffs can readily recognize quotes and allusions to more than a dozen plays ranging from The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew, through the History plays, particularly the chronicles of Henry IV and V, to Hamlet and Julius Caesar and more, as well as a number of sonnets (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes…”). However, the main frame on which the show is constructed is the “Seven Ages of Man” speech, delivered by Jacques in As You Like It.

That’s the one that begins “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…” who take on many different parts, beginning with the mewling infant and then the whining schoolboy creeping unwillingly to school. Then there is the lover, the soldier, the self-satisfied justice, the old man, and finally the last stage of “second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Porter’s cast of three women and four men constantly change costumes to take on a multitude of roles, quoting Shakespeare’s lines and performing Sondheim’s songs in a variety of musical styles, as they enact the seven stages.

Beginning with the Prologue, The Family awaits the arrival of the new baby, to the music “Take Me To The World.” Then comes the Christening, with the song “Children Will Listen” (from Into the Woods) sung by Rema Webb, who plays the mother figure throughout the passage of time.  The advice she gives to her son, “To thine own self be true” foreshadows the problems that Leslie Odom, Jr. – a stand-in for Porter – will face, coming to terms with his own homosexuality, in a Pentecostal Christian world.

As the children come of age, N’Kenge and Chuck Cooper sing a beautiful double duet mixing “Not while I’m Around” (“no one’s gonna harm you”) with “Anyone Can Whistle” celebrating a father’s protective and enveloping love for his daughter.

The section called “Love Jones” uses eight songs from such shows as Sweeney Todd,  A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company and Passion to explore the varieties of romantic experience. The men ogle the girls in “Pretty Women,” the playboy character, Joshua Henry, echoes Petrucchio (from Taming of the Shrew) subduing N’kenge with the number “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” and eventually, the manly Ken Robinson and the earthy Natalie Venetia Belcon are joined in matrimony by the Pentacostal preacher, Rema, who finishes the wedding service and lashes out at her son, Leslie, for his lifestyle.

“Cacophony” interrupts the occasion with the blast of war. Chuck, Ken and Josh don uniforms and hoist duffel bags, as they  leave the women to go off and become soldiers. At first it is all a manly thrill – “Something About a War” (from Forum) – but then it grows somber. As the camera toting, camouflage vested Leslie documents the high costs of combat, Josh loses a leg, and Ken is reduced to a folded flag and set of dog tags presented to Natalie.

As life goes on, in the section titled “The Enlightenment,” a spiritualized Ken returns to Natalie as memory, with the song “No One is Alone,” and Leslie emerges as a serious, eloquent, bespectacled preacher himself, reconciled with his mother, who realizes that she is in fact proud of him for remaining true to himself.

Toward the conclusion, daughter N’Kenge and her father have a role reversal, as she now comforts him in his dotage with a reprise of “Not While I’m Around,” and the family sings “Fear No More” (the heat of the sun) which Sondheim took directly from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. And so forth.

The effect of all this was sweeping and cumulative. The talents of the seven performers were immense. The musical staging and interpretation – performed by an onstage quintet – was impressive and in the end, it did what its creator Billy Porter wanted to do: it captured the universal experience as envisioned by two disparate geniuses, and fused it into something new, exciting, and powerful.