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It was my first time in The Kitchen, this past Friday, and the first thing I noticed, aside from the friendly, casual hostesses at the door, was how amazing the performance space is. A very simple black-box theater, with very high ceilings, bare walls with the lighting equipment showing, it seems to be created for precisely what The Kitchen offers: unpretentious, non-mainstream, great quality performances. It’s one of these spaces with real personality, that can inspire performances specifically created for it (I was wondering if performance artists have already done this-create something with that space in mind- if anyone knows please let me know!).
I went to see Alicia Hall Moran’s The Motown Project. I admit that I didn’t know her work but I was looking for an opportunity to go to The Kitchen and the show’s online description attracted me. And what a discovery it was! Has it ever happened to you that you like something so much and you can’t even (and not even care to) explain why? Because this is how I was feeling after the performance ended. Moran sang with a purely operatic voice great Motown hits- from Marvin Gaye’s I heard it through the Grapevine to Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m yours, occasionally intertwined with classical arias from Bizet’s Carmen and Mozart’s Figaro in transitions so artistically created (thanks also to the subtle magic of Thomas Flippin’s classic guitar) that were almost imperceptible. The songs were structured through a loose storyline of betrayed or unrequited love - Moran who also had the artistic direction of the program, staged it using the very simple concept of a young woman flipping through the pages of a photo album, very occasionally interacting with her musicians or, more interestingly, with the instruments. My director’s eyes kept telling me that more work on the staging and direction of the piece might have helped bring out the humor of the performance that was already there- partly inherent in the operatic rendering of popular hits and partly deliberately emphasized by the singer in her interpretation of the unhappy lover. It might have also helped smoothen some moments of stage awkwardness that occurred during some transitions or scenes that required a bit more “acting”. Yet by the end of it, all of this didn’t really matter. There was a disarming simplicity in the way the performance connected seemingly contrasting styles and sounds to a completely new, original interpretation. In addition to Moran’s voice and Flippin’s guitar, the group was graced with Clare Bathe’s vocals, Tarus Mateen’s base and Kaoru Watanabe’s Japanese drums- a combination of sounds that created fascinating musical dialogues on stage. There was something so ingenuous in the way the performance made these dialogues at times seem seamless (as with the wonderful transition from Signed, Sealed, Delivered I am yours to L’amour est un oiseau rebelle) and at times emphasized them- for example when the two women sang together- Moran with her operatic voice and Bathe with her powerful, visceral soul singing (my personal most favorite moments). And there was something absolutely admirable in the way Moran succeeded in maintaining the very fine balance between allowing the humor to come out of her interpretation while avoiding falling into the trap of mockery, thus paying equal respect to both genres at the same time.
The evening ended beautifully with wine and mingling in the lobby that felt as warm and welcoming as a house party. The Kitchen has become an absolute favorite!