By David Patrick Stearns
INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
The first thing anybody needs to know about Ludwig Live! is that the cabaret show, playing at the Kimmel Center’s Innovation Studio, has little to do with Beethoven or even having laughs at his expense. Using tired devices such as the clash of high and low art, Ludwig Live!, which opened Friday, explores how intentionally ramshackle showbiz somehow holds the stage.
The concept is that cranky old Beethoven — played by Charles Lindberg, in the cheapest wig imaginable — is somehow back from the dead and taking his story on the road with a troupe of actors. But all have quit. The one survivor is his mousy, amiable stage manager, played by Katherine Pecevich, who is faced with playing all the characters in his life story as well as the legions of modern celebrities he credits himself with influencing, from Elvis Presley to Sarah Palin.
So the humor lies mostly in Pecevich’s frantic, jerry-rigged efforts to do the impossible with more bad wigs, funny glasses, a fake nose, and a few warmed-over Jerry Stiller jokes.
The performers are more capable than the show deserves. Lindberg sings and plays piano (including bits of Beethoven sonatas) tirelessly. But why Beethoven? Aren’t there better pretenses? Beethoven’s hapless assistant exclaims, “If I wanted to work for a bipolar egomaniac, I’d work for Charlie Sheen!” Maybe that’s the sequel!
As it stands, the best moments in Ludwig Live! could be in a show about anybody, although the idea of Beethoven and Mozart (played by Pecevich) singing “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)” may have more truth to it than the show’s creators thought. There is novelty in having Beethoven pieces fitted with fast-paced intentionally ill-fitting lyrics. But in an attempt to shoehorn his story into conventional theatrical devices, author/director Nancy Holson gives it a corny emotional arc by having Beethoven finally learn to play from his heart (one problem the real Beethoven never had). The rest is so much second-hand humor that Lindberg and Pecevich are faced with salvaging something so flimsy it barely exists. And that’s not funny.
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
Through Jan. 29 at Innovation Studio, Kimmel Center, 260 S. Broad St. Tickets: $35-$47. Information: 893-1999 (option 2), www.kimmelcenter.org
Howard Shapiro reviews and writes about theater for The Inquirer, and has been on staff since 1970. He's had many posts at the newspaper, including cultural arts editor and editor of the Weekend section. He's twice been the editor of the Travel section, for which he writes frequently. He began writing theater criticism a decade ago, and has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, an Internews fellow in Greece, and a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts' Journalism Institutue in Theater and Musical Theater, where Robert Brustein was among his mentors. He teaches arts criticism and travel writing at Temple University, and is Broadway critic for the NPR-affliated stations of the Classical Network.
Toby Zinman's night job since 2006 is theater critic for the Inquirer. She also is a contributing writer for Variety and American Theatre magazine. Her day job: Prize-winning prof at UArts, author of four books about four playwrights (Rabe, McNally, Miller, Albee), and doer of scholarly deeds (winner of five NEH grants, Fulbright lecturer at Tel Aviv University, visiting professor in China). Her 'weekend' job as a travel writer provides adventure: dogsledding in the Yukon, ziplining in Belize, walking coast-to-coast across England, and cowboying in the Australian Outback.
Wendy Rosenfield has been writing freelance features and theater reviews for The Inquirer since 2006. She was theater critic for the Philadelphia Weekly from 1995 to 2001, after which she enjoyed a five-year baby-raising sabbatical. She also writes the ArtsJournal blog Drama Queen. She was 2009 and 2010 Guest Critic for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Region II National Critics Institute, a 2008 NEA Fellow in Theater and Musical Theater, and a participant in the Bennington Writer's Workshop. A graduate of Bennington College, she is inching toward a Master's degree in Liberal Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. She also is a fiction writer, was proofreader to a swami, publications editor for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and a Brownie Girl Scout troop leader.
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