The True Last Words of Dutch Schultz (2007)
... However the real coup de theatre is Scene VI, entitled The Nightmare which is essentially a mad scene for baritone and ice scraper—think Lucia and glass harmonica!
The gangster experiences a delirious premonition of his ultimate fate in this thrilling morgue sequence. There is no written score, rather the singer improvises cadenzas out of sibilance and guttural utterances. Dirk Weiler, in the demanding role of Dutch Schultz, was able to transform the criminal's sharp intelligence and penchant for cruelty into the instincts of a feral animal trapped in a world in which it is now at the mercy of forces greater than itself. His improvisation was a tour de force that reduced life to the simple act of breathing. It is brilliantly conceived theater that reveals breath as the vehicle of sound, word and ultimately ego which Dutch had in abundance. As the scene climaxes he begins to mouth words and once again his bravado rages into a soaring high note after which he swoons and topples to the floor...
(read the full review)
Martin Hennessy
New Music Connoisseur 2007
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Noise and Smoke (2005)
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In looking over 2005, we can note the growing number of ensembles and reviews that have been featured in cabaret rooms. These venues have increasingly served the function once associated with off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway. One theater-piece-in-the-making was Noise and Smoke: Hits of Weimar Berlin, the first performance last fall of the Kabarett Kollektif series. Featuring Karen Kohler and Dirk Weiler, it consisted of little patter, focusing—-as we learned at the end of the show-—on songs that were all eventually banned by the Nazi regime.
Karen and Dirk played very well together, singly and jointly well suited to the characters they depicted or described: gigolos, vamps, and, on the other side, dreamers. Particularly striking was their duet, Liar, liar, a translation of Holländer’s Münchhausen. One of them would describe a utopia at odds with contemporary Weimar society, while the other would counter with accusations of falsehood.
By now Cabaret Scenes readers and cabaret audiences are familiar with Karen, our September 2005 cover girl. She not only created the Kollektif but also has garnered praise for her solo Marlene Dietrich show, for sharing the spotlight with Greta in Berlin-Paris Express, and for appearing here and abroad with KT Sullivan. Personally wholesome, Karen has perfected her dramatic presentation of Weimar decadence!
Still unfamiliar to most cabaret audiences is Dirk Weiler, the delightful surprise of Noise and Smoke. Dirk is a suave, attractive, multi-talented performer who can not only sing grand opera but also skillfully perform cabaret songs with an extraordinary versatility. He is as well a skilled tap dancer and trained actor, possessing a very mobile face that can express the tender or the demonic (as in Der Koch orThe Cook, which allows him to portray a Sweeney-Todd-like character whose butcheries and grotesque meals for the führer symbolize Nazi brutality).
Dirk is also very funny, adept at conveying the irony necessary for satire. He introduced the show with a stern description of its content as well as, implicitly, the behavior expected of the audience who must give up their idea of an intermission. Dirk’s caricature of German authoritarianism, already the subject of jokes, became therefore a joke about a class of jokes (for example, the familiar one about the unsuspecting passenger at a German airport who forgets a piece of personal information and is informed, “we have ways of making you remember”).
In any event, Noise and Smoke provided in addition to its absorbing content a virtual showcase for this amazing virtuoso—-all that is missing was the tap dancing. Perhaps we will get this as well in future shows, for hopefully Dirk will become a familiar figure in cabaret venues.
Barbara Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
December 30, 2005
www.cabaretscenes.com
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On the Banks of the Surreal (2005)
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It's French; It's Fringy; the Nose Is Very Good
By NEIL GENZLINGER
The New York Times
(Published: August 6, 2005)
Connoisseurs of the weird can warm up for the New York International Fringe Festival, which starts next weekend, with a trip back in time to fringy France. The show is ''On the Banks of the Surreal,'' and it consists of five short plays from the early and middle chunks of the last century by French or French-influenced writers that make you wonder what was in the water over there.
The bill, assembled by the Xoregos Performing Company and partaking of the disorienting nectars of Dada, Surrealism and Absurdism, is arranged on a sliding scale of incomprehensibility, with the hard work coming first.
It begins with a 1920 play called ''The Gas Heart'' by Tristan Tzara in which pieces of a face (Dirk Weiler as the Eye and Christopher Berryman as the Nose are especially good) talk in fragmentary gibberish, although things build to a zippy conclusion that's worth sticking around for:
''Maid to Marry,'' a 1952 play by Ionesco that is dazzlingly performed and even makes sense, sort of. In between are Michel de Ghelderode, Jean Cocteau and René Magritte, along with a couple dandy bits of musical comic relief by a baritone named John Rose. Shela Xoregos directs it all with verve and a wink.
Magritte's ''Round Square,'' a one-joke wonder involving a count (Mr. Weiler), a countess (Rachel Lu) and a butler (Mr. Berryman), is hilarious and surprisingly crass for 1953. Cocteau's ''Practical Joke'' (1940) isn't much but benefits from a good telling by Rupak Ginn. The de Ghelderode play, ''Escurial,'' is the darkest: Peter Johnson is a king and Rodney Sheley a jester, and there's death in the air.
It's the Ionesco, though (with David Ostwald sharing the directing credit), that makes the show.
Mr. Weiler and Jen Arvay athletically play every child's game one can think of while incongruously discussing weighty grownup subjects. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn't, but it sure is fun to watch.
It almost banishes the odd sense of regret that hangs over the production. Maybe it's simply the sad nostalgia of dead forms. Or maybe it's the timely reminder that nothing that will turn up at the Fringe Festival is really trailblazing in the world of weirdness.
That cliché about there being nothing new under the sun? As the Nose says in opening play, ''How true, how true, how true, how true, how true.''
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Dirk Weiler pontificates with a dry-eyed monotone,
reminiscent of Ben Stein, that puts the crazy capering in relief.
Both Dirk Weiler and Jen Arvay give bravura performances whose accelerated physical acrobatics overtake and underscore the dialogue's prosaic critique of capitalism, climaxing in a coup de theatre.
— William Cordeiro, Off-Off-Online
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Teresa Stratas Presents New Weill Singers
Noted soprano Teresa Stratas presented a new generation of performers of the music of Kurt Weill (1900-1950), all prizewinners at 1999's Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers, on Sunday (Feb. 6) at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.
Stratas -- closely linked to Weill through her friendship with the composer's widow Lenya, and her recordings of his music -- introduced each number offered by the five young singers. Her anecdotes veered from tragic to burlesque, until she had the audience in the palm of her hand, at times almost overshadowing the other performers.
At least some of the winners were likely future stars: Soprano Christina Carr artfully encompassed the range between a song Weill wrote for Broadway, "Speak Low (When You Speak Love)" and a more classical melody of Schubertian inspiration, "O Meine Tochter" from his opera Die Burgschaft.
German baritone Dirk Weiler was even more impressive -- after a vigorous and extroverted version of Weill's "Bilbao Song" from Happy End, he offered an amusing "How Can You Tell an American?" in a macaronic mix of German and English. Weiler moved so confidently onstage that it was no surprise to learn from the program notes that he has also worked as a tap dance instructor.
This kind of range of stage talents follows in the tradition of Lotte Lenya, herself an actress who could put across a song unforgettably, rather than a singer in any conventional sense. In time for Weill's centenary this year, Sony Classics has reprinted two CDs of the inimitable Lenya, proving that the couple was, as Stratas put it, "singers of songs of life." Showing herself inimitable in her own way, Stratas said that Weill's music "asks us to be compassionate about our own frailties," and added that if Weill were "alive today to compose a song about Amadou Diallo, he would compose all 41 bullets on one lyric line," capturing the points of view of the shooting victim, his family and friends, the policemen who shot him, etc.
This reference, and even more so, the talents of these beginning singers, all accompanied by pianist Thomas Rosenkranz, suggested that Weill's artistry and social-political consciousness are still timely indeed. It is hard to imagine a more fitting salute for the composer's centenary.
-- Benjamin Ivry
CD Now
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