pt at large

Back The Night: Melinda Lopez's Drama Timely, Skirts Challenging Questions

Back The Night by Melinda Lopez
Boston Playwrights' Theatre
949 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, MA 02215
February 4- February 28, 2016
Reviewed after February 26 performance

Back The Night by playwright Melinda Lopez seemed like a good bet. As I listened to the play develop, it felt like playwright Melinda Lopez wanted to make a statement about sexual violence on college campuses and created characters to explore it. Not a bad idea, except when she crams so many themes into one 90-minute play.

The production values are simple and solid, as they usually are in the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Rob Eastman-Mullins’ set with Misaki Nishimiya’s props suggest a college campus with cut out backgrounds of clock tower and dorms and multi purpose props to suggest everything from college admin offices to rally platforms and a dorm room. David Wilson’s lighting and music fit mood and action appropriately.

With a thoughtful refocusing of exposition, this could become a much more compelling production. As it stands, the play seems more like a treatise.

In the play’s opening scene, Cassie (Amanda Collins) shows up at Em’s dorm room, her face bloody, accompanied by a friend. She tells Em (Melissa Jesser) her best friend on campus, that she was attacked. The next 80 minutes explore what happened, how Em’s boyfriend, campus police, college administrators, and politicians react. It also tests the two women’s friendship.

College officials respond in ways similar to those we’ve seen on the 7 o’clock News…promise investigations, more security, and no tolerance for violence. It is far too convenient that Em’s mother happens to be a senator running for re-election and not above leveraging the event for political points when she shows up at a huge rally. And that Cassie has been blogging exposés about a fraternity with a reputation for degrading women. And that Em’s boyfriend happens to be a member of that fraternity.

Evan Horwitz adds a light touch as Sean, a very out iPhone wielding gay friend to both Em and Cassie. Socially tuned in and amusingly self-absorbed, it’s a hoot watching him make a pitch for the LGBT community when the TV crews show up. I couldn’t help thinking that this was Lopez’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to cram another constituency into the drama.

Stephanie Clayman hits the mark in her stereotype roles as the campus doctor, the college dean, and the senator. Michael Underhill is solid as Em’s frat boy boyfriend who wants to do the right thing for his fraternity and his girlfriend. James Kooi ably fills minor roles as Officer Sam, a reporter, and the college president.

Things get cloudy when Lopez tries to tie up loose ends in the plays final minutes. Em has doubted Cassie’s version of events. Cassie’s denial is not categorical. Em acknowledges having had some kind of sexual encounter at an alcohol infused party at the fraternity house that Cassie has critically blogged about.

If I understood the dialogue clearly, Em acknowledges she was in the moment, letting loose a fraternity party, having fun with a good looking guy, may have been a little drunk, and things got out of hand and other young men may have been involved…the dialogue, spoken softly, was hard for me to decipher.

Placing this revelation earlier would have been a braver, and more difficult, way for Lopez to explore the often-discordant accounts of sexual assault or rape on college campuses. Perhaps play director Daniela Varon could have helped by having Em’s critical dialogue audible to the back row (third) of the small theater.

Some sexual assaults are clearly intentional, inexcusable, and demand condemnation and punishment. Others, like the one Em appeared to experience, call for a playwright to render a drama in which an audience has to grapple with situations in which consent was or was not violated. In that regard, Back The Night falls short.

Photograph credit: Kalman Zabarsky.

Milk Like Sugar: Served Up With Theatrical Aplomb

Milk Like Sugar
Roberts Theater
Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA
February 23, 2016
January 29-February 27, 2016

Wow. This is the kind of play I’ve been hoping would surface in Boston and should have long before this. Several young African-American actors, up to the minute culturally relevant themes, music, and staging. 

Kirsten Greenridge’s Milk Like Sugar aims a blunderbuss at the teenage experience. Identity, values, self esteem, individuality vs. groupthink, finding love, family dynamics dysfunctional and otherwise, relationships, teen pregnancy…I mean, we’re all over the place.  

The fact that the characters are often sketches or stereotyped doesn’t matter a jot. They’re so well acted, feel so authentic, that I was caught up from scene to scene, rooting for Annie, the lead, to find a way to moor herself to her own reality and plan a future that she chooses, not the dead end kind that her friends or her mother try to influence her to take. Having the straight thinking Annie follow their path would legitimize the shallow choices and compromises they’ve made themselves.

The multicultural cast hits it out of the ballpark. 

Annie Desmond (Jasmine Carmichael) balancing her loyalty to her friends with the nascent belief that life is about more than babies and boyfriends that her high school pals revolve around; Margie (Carolina Sanchez) whose goal in life is to have someone of her own to love, a child of her own to give the love she's never experienced; Talisha (Shazi Raja), who will suffer any indignity to be Number One on “Her boy’s" list and flames anyone whose values differ from hers; Myra (Ramona Lisa Alexander) Annie’s single mother who long ago extinguished ambition or hope that she could amount to anything just like she snuffs out the cigarettes she incessantly smokes; Malik (Marc Pierre), possible choice to become the father of Annie’s child but focused on getting into college as a way out of the cycle of poverty and addiction; Antwoine (Matthew J. Harris) the young tattoo artist employed to give the three girls the same tattoo to bind them together in a pregnancy pact and a man with his own failed dream that haunts him; and Keera (Shanae Burch) the nerdy classmate whose connection with the steadiness of church life seems to represent salvation, love and a sense of belonging to the love starved Annie.

The play’s pace often feels frenetic, nearly off the rails with rapid fire incisive and provocative teen speak. The slower paced moments between Annie and Malik and Annie and her mother represent what Greenridge sees as the social and emotional gulf between parent and child and young men and women in the black experience.

The final scenes are touching. I’m not so sure that even Greenridge finds a satisfying resolution in the play’s last scene but when everything before it is so powerfully wrought, she gets a pass from me for alluding to a sense of hope that somehow this girl Annie has the inner core to withstand whatever obstacles life has in store for her.

What else? The play’s set - bright aluminum fencing, with sliding gates ingeniously incorporated into it, lines the back, offers characters entry and exit, and cantilevers over the stage - fits the sense of social imprisonment the characters live in. The hip-hop music, short vibrant dance routines, and social interplay seem like a page right out of a high school hallway…a chameleon corridor that can be carefree hilarious or as mean and snarky as the ones you remember but way more devastating. There is only one way to be cool. Woe to the kid like Keera who bucks the tide.

The production is one solid piece of work. Costumes/attire by Junghyn Georgia Lee fit the characters’ personalities as well as it fits their bodies. M.L. Dogg’s sound design is what you hear blaring from a teenage driver’s radio. M. Bevin O’Gara finds the right touch with staging, casting, and tone.

Greenridge has a broad appeal. The audience tonight was the most diverse in terms of race and age I’ve ever seen in Boston. Boston producers, please pay attention.

Milk Like Sugar proves that Greenridge, a Waltham, MA, resident, has her fingers on the pulse of her generation...and an alluring possibility of things to come from her pen. 

L Ramona Lisa Alexander and Jasmine Carmichael in Milk Like Sugar

R Carolina Sanchez, Jasmine Carmichael, and Shazi Raja in Milk Like Sugar

Photos courtesy of Huntington Theater

Mardi Gras 2016: The Tee Mamou Iota, Louisiana Mardi Gras

Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Iota, LA

Drop the area of Iota’s downtown into your standard USA shopping mall and it will rattle around like a BB in a barrel. Throw in its 1483 inhabitants and that mall would swallow them up as easily as the whale gulped Jonah. On Mardi Gras day, however, the steam of three hundred years of Acadian/French culture makes the place explode like a kernel of corn.

This is Louisiana, of course there is music and food involved.  A big time Cajun or zydeco band plays on a raised dance stage set up smack in the middle of Duson Avenue, the main street that divides Iota in two. Dancers from near and far have highlighted this on their calendars and arrive at 10 AM (yes) to start their day. They’re more than happy to drive an hour from Lafayette to party (free) on the sturdy stage with the plywood floor that undulates gently under the rhythmic pounding of feet.  

The Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras is about much more than music and dancing. It’s the annual re-baptism of the little town into its history and culture. The rowdy courir de Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is a day of revelry that precedes Ash Wednesday and the next 40 days of restraints associated with Lent in the Roman Catholic calendar.

Centuries ago, French peasants would dress in colorful costumes, wear masks and conical hats (capuchons) to disguise themselves on this day, and roam (“courir”) to homes of landowners to beg for food, often entertaining them and playing pranks. A prize catch (literally) would be a chicken that would be used to make a communal gumbo for a feast at the end of the day.

Today, men have been at it since 7 AM. Instead of riding by horse, they scour the nearby countryside on trucks on a route planned in advance. Homeowners and farmers are ready for their visitors who might be offered a beer but have to work hard to corral a floppy flying chicken. By the time they return, men hoist chickens as prizes. Tomorrow they may hoist aspirin for a hangover.

Most people think the day is done when at 3 PM the trucks loaded with whooping and hollering costumed revelers roll into town on the special flatbeds made for just this purpose. Escorted by police cars with sirens blaring, this is a spectacle to behold. VIDEO1   VIDEO2   VIDEO3

Little boys and girls riding in pickup trucks throw candy into the crowd along a 300-yard stretch of the street. After off loading from the trucks, first the children then the adults take to the stage to sing the Mardi Gras song (in Cajun French), a perennial ritual that winds down Mardi Gras. No marching bands, no floats with beads being thrown to spectators, just history, straight up.

This is when the heartbeat of Iota takes over. Spectacle coalesces into community as the men and women leave the stage. The courir participants are greeted with hugs, appreciation, and admiration. They’ve participated in a ritual that binds them to their town, their families, their friends, their culture…and are proud of it.

As I wander through the crowd, it seems like everyone in Iota is connected to someone who’s done a courir. A couple of “May I take your photo?” requests bring me face to face with Iota’s past, present, and future.

That’s when I met Katy Comeaux and Shea Lantz and his mom and dad, all from Iota.

“I’ve done the courir since I was 15, now I’m 23. ” Katy says. “There is a woman’s courir on the Saturday before Mardi Gras every year. This year 88 of us went from house to house begging for food and chasing chickens for the community gumbo like the men did today. My family is really involved, some of the men are captains in the courir.”

“My mother made my hat and mask and clothes for this,” she says, “hand made costumes are a requirement.”

At least three generations take part in the ritual. “There’s a children’s courir every Sunday before Mardi Gras. They stay close to town, beg for food and chase chickens, just like the men and women.”

Shea Lantz, now 26, has been in the courir since he was 15 years old. “My dad has been running the courir for 40 years, more consecutive years than any one else. He and I are the only two allowed to sit on the roof of the wagon in the parade.” (photo under paragraph 5)  Troy Lantz is a town councilman and Iota's police commissioner. Shea, a former EMT,  just finished his internship and has his mortician's license.

Shea and Troy point out how they constructed their capuchins (conical hats) with crawfish trap mesh. “It doesn’t collapse like cardboard when it gets wet,” Shea’s dad Troy says. I marvel at the hand stitching of the inner headband. The mask's mouthpieces and eye openings are made from shaker screen, an extremely durable oil field mesh screen used to separate mud and small particles from fluids in the drilling process. The use of these screens is creativity with a distinct Louisiana twist.

Troy's mask fuses family history with Cajun customs. It was sewn by his late cousin 35 years ago. “Hand-sewing the hats and masks is 100% tradition,” Shea says with pride. Shea later tells me that until three years ago he and his dad wore Mardi Gras suits made by the same cousin 35 years ago. "The material became so brittle that we didn't want to ruin them."

“We welcome people who come here to watch us carry on our tradition,” Shea says. "It helps our little festival keep going."

"Where are you from?" they ask. And wonder why I come to this small place for this big holiday.

“Everything in this custom feels so authentic. I can see and feel the pride you have in re-enacting the courir and the way you’re passing it on to the next generations. It’s really unusual to see an entire town connect like this, it just doesn’t happen everywhere,” I say. "And the people, like you and your dad, are friendly."

The earliest arriving Cajuns endured great hardships. They survived by staying connected with their language and customs. They have a fierce determination to carry them on. Find out for yourself. Head for Iota next year on Mardi Gras day.

For most Americans, their heritage is a gauzy memory set in scrapbooks and family mementos. In Iota it’s a tradition that grows as vigorously as the rice fields in the nearby prairies.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Louisiana Mardi Gras 2016: Moments At Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras

Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Iota, LA

 

Head down Duson Avenue, camp chairs and supplies in  tow, toward the dance stage, already rockin' at 10:30 AM, in the shadow of the giant water tower in Iota, LA. Host Bernard Ussher says only three other places celebrate Mardi Gras on the scale of southwest Louisiana -  Mobile, Alabama,  Rio de Janeiro, and Venice. 


Buy tickets at a buck apiece for hot fresh beignets, syrup pies, home made cookies and cracklins, The beignets are to die for. Cracklins are an acquired taste. The syrup pies have been sold out for an hour...got to get here earlier next year!

Stroll down Duson Avenue to the American Legion Hall a hundred yards from the dance stage, listen to teenagers play Cajun music under watchful eyes of veterans, line up for red beans and rice, shrimp etoufée or jambalaya cooked by local residents. This is the best place for lunch today. Local people come here for lunch and the day's entertainment. Don't miss it.


Norma from New Orleans practically danced herself from the door to the other end of the room when she entered. A Cajun waltz can do that to you...had to dance with her; chat with two sisters and friends from DeRidder, Louisiana. They are amazed I have come here to this little town in the middle of nowhere for Mardi Gras.

You never know who'll sit next to your crowd. "I sang for six years as the featured vocalist with Buddy Morrow’s Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, lots of time in Boston," says Leif Pedersen after learning I'm from Boston. "I'll be showing my Swamp Kids children's books at the Festival Acadiens et Creole with Candace Alexander of Fleur de Lis art. Children finish their Mardi Gras song.

The children have just finished their Mardi Gras song. Some adults have come on stage to join them as the band plays on. I'm right behind them to take some photos. "Would you like to dance?" I look down to see a little girl with her hands extended, I reach down and we have a lovely miniature Cajun waltz. It feels like I'm connecting with generations of her forbears. "What's your name?" "Emily" "Thank you, Emily!" She gives me a hug. I kneel beside her for a photo. I am at big sap. I have had my my share of fabulous dances with the big girls, the women. This little waltz with Emily tops the list.

Showing off prize catches; hugs for a job well done; photo opp...

teenagers barrage me with questions after I take their picture – Are we going to be on TV? Are you a reporter? Did you come in a bus? (I hadn't realized it but there are actually bus tours that have taken tourists to this event). They see a guy with a camera and a notebook and, even though he is wearing a green wig and tattered Mardi Gras pants, they think they might have a moment on the evening news. Do you all go to school here? Yes. Do you like to dance? Yes! With lots of giggles

Dig into your pockets, pardner, Mardi Gras's not over; time to reflect and relax.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. Thanks to Bernard Ussher for photo of me and Emily

 

 

A Huge Loss for The Camellia Grill and New Orleans: Marvin Day

February 11, 2016

Talk to anyone who ever ate at The Camellia Grill on South Carrolton in New Orleans and the first thing they'll remember is Marvin. New Orleans is known for all kinds of fabulous food but seldom does the memory of person serving it eclipse the wonder of the food. Marvin "Word" Day unexpectedly passed away at the young age of 50. Tributes and a deep sense of loss from all over the country are finding their way to this pink-walled retro restaurant.

http://www.nola.com/dining/index.ssf/2016/02/marvin_camellia_grill_dies.html

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/features/14847889-63/at-the-camellia-grill-tributes-to-a-beloved-waiter-are-on-the-walls-on-the-menu-and-summed-up-with-o

My 2009 post about The Camellia Grill features Marvin with all the charm, levity, and humanity that he served up every day.

Feel free to add your own comment about Marvin or this post.

Online version at http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2009/11/the-camellia-grill-sunny-side-up-in-new-orleans.html

++++++++

The Camellia Grill
626 S Carrollton Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118-1008
Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sun 8:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Fri, Sat 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM

The food's a good reason to eat here but the real star of the Camellia Grill is the floorshow.

This retro little diner with the Greek Revival architecture could be a museum piece. The pink walls were stylish around 1950. The two connected horseshoe-shaped granite counters and 28 bolted to the floor green vinyl topped stools haven’t budged since the place opened in 1946.

A mean customer named Katrina closed it down on August 29, 2005. Its reopening in 2007 was a sign that New Orleans was bent, not broken. Next to the Saints winning a Super Bowl, this was one of the best stories in town. It’s a destination for locals and tourists alike.

 The favorites - giant fluffy omelets, cheeseburgers, “freezes,” pecan waffles and pies live up to their accolades. What you don’t expect is that your sense of well-being will be fed while you eat.

 After a few minutes, you realize you’re in an interactive environment - not the techie zeroes and ones kind, but the give and take human kind that crackles with repartee between the counter men and customers, the occasional song, and as much banter as you can muster to match the delightful goings on behind the counter.

This morning, Marvin, a slightly built man with the playfulness of a modern day Flip Wilson, is running the show on our side of the Grill. A walking bundle of energy, his wit is sharp as one of the knives next to the grill. He occupies the place as thoroughly as the aromas of ham, toast, and bacon.

 Right now he’s running a blue-plate streak of antic, imaginative riffs with a string of customers. Things get quiet for a minute then and a syncopated bom ba da bum bum, bum-bum clatter of a metal spatula on one of the hot grills freezes forks halfway to the customers’ mouths.
 
There’s Marvin shouting “Aaattentionnnn, everyone!” He leans back theatrically and cups his hands around his mouth for effect. “We have twooooo birthday people in the house…” Seconds later, he leads the 28 bemused patrons in a hearty rendition of Happy Birthday.
 
One of the six cooks, who’s been efficiently ham and egging, seemingly oblivious to Marvin’s antics, turns from the grill and shouts, “Now you've got to dance,” and damn if this middle-aged guy doesn't get up from his ancient green topped stools and twirl his wife around the narrow space in front of the counter. Cheers erupt. This is New Orleans in full.
 
There’s Marvin observing to no one in particular, “Monday's the most important day in the week. Get Monday off to a good start and you're gonna have a good week!” Lord knows, he might say the same thing on Tuesday. With his cadenced elocution he might as well be in a pulpit. You’re listening to the gospel according to St. Marvin.
 
After a few minutes, you feel your core beginning to lighten up, your shoulders let go of that tension you didn't realize was there, and you begin to giggle, for god’s sake.
 
There are no order pads. Marvin, without looking back at the grill, shouts commands in Camellia lingo. Four cooks in front of a long line of fryers, grills, toasters, blenders, pots and pans are whipping up eggs, frying sausage, pouring pancakes and blending freezes. There’s hardly a clue they’ve heard him but everyone’s order appears within five minutes.
 
"I think everyone needs a little magic in their lives," Marvin shouts to a Tulane student sitting with her boyfriend.
 
"That's why we came here!" she fires back. I’m telling you, before long nearly every customer becomes a bit player in this daytime soap opera known as Camellia Grill.
 
"What's goin' ooonnnnn… as Marvin Gaye used to say," Marvin croons to a new customer. Camellia’s is serving soul food, all right. More than your appetite is being fed.
 
“What's the yellow liquid in that container,” I inquire.

"Sweet-as-silk, richly-satisfying buttahh," Marvin declares. "Be careful. We had to call the butter police about a week ago, told 'em to butterize a customer who used too much of it at (he uses his finger to point as he counts aloud one two three four five six seven eight nine stools from where I sit) stool number nine. They started butterizing the guy at stool ten. We had to save him and point out the guy who was sitting where you are at stool nine."
 

All this repartee gets perfect strangers feeling like they’re in an exclusive club. That includes the father and mother from New Jersey visiting their daughter sitting next to us.

Ashley and her Tulane roommates were shopping nearby a while ago and stumbled upon the Camellia. Dazzled by the floor show that came with the food, they decided they'd found the place to eat till they graduate. And the perfect place to take visiting parents. By the time the bill is delivered, we’ve shared tips on other great places to eat.

 Tell me the name of another place where you can come in and ask Marvin or one of his cohorts to charge your cell phone and have them do it and sing you a song when you're about to check out. (I saw this, really.)
 
"This is the place," Marvin playfully sings out, " we give you the love rub, we give your tummy a love rub." Psyches, too, Marvin.
 
The  pink walls are hung with black and white photos of the grill's history. Most of them are of the waiters, past and present, who’ve worked the Camellia Grill for decades. Marvin’s been there since 1992.
 
Later, a native New Orleanian tells us that Henry Thervalon worked at Camellia Grill for nearly fifty years. His son was a superior court judge, but Henry was better known. "When they sold T-shirts, they charged $10 more when Henry signed one," he said. 

I tell you, I would have paid five bucks more for my pecan waffle and my companion’s out of this world fluffy sausage and cheese omelet if Marvin had signed them. 

There are mountains of great food served around this town. There’s only one place you leave with a lighter heart and an ample serving of what makes New Orleans one of the special places on this good earth. Its name is the Camellia Grill. 

 We're in New Orleans for two more days. Guess where we're having breakfast tomorrow.Marvin Day at right in group photos above

Photos by  Paul Tamburello

Louisiana Mardi Gras 2016: Sabra and The Get Rights, Chas Justus and The Jury

Blue Moon Saloon
215 East Convent Street
Lafayette, LA
http://bluemoonpresents.com/web/

Artmosphere Bistro
902 Johnson Street
Lafayette, LA
http://www.artmosphere.co

Lafayette, Louisiana is the most prolific incubator of singers, songwriters, and musical inspiration west of the Mississippi. Most of the musicians have been raised in towns dotting the prairie. Some, like Sabra Guzman, have been drawn here by the creative energy of the music scene, a benign black hole drawing talented musicians from afar.

Groups form, add members, trade members, morph into new groups, honor Cajun and zydeco genres, bend them into new directions, listen to each other’s music and cross polinate to invent hybrids never heard before. From honky tonk, country, old fashioned Cajun and La La (zydeco) to rap or rock tinged songs, they revel in making music that’s made to inspire dancers to invent right along with them.

Sabra (Guzman) and the Get Rights are a perfect example. Tonight’s five piece band are crackerjack musicians familiar with the honky tonk and western swing catalog from the good ol’ days of Patsy Cline, Bob Wills, right down to Dolly Parton and a killer cover of Buck Owens “Cryin’ Time” by fiddler David Greeley.

Sabra was deep into the country music of Appalachia when she felt the tug of Lafayette. She fronts the band with an easy blend of folksiness and a robust voice to interpret the ballads and two step numbers. With influences like Louvin Brothers and Mother Maybelle Carter, you know she can croon and belt it out.

 "What do you guys want...fast or slow?" she asks at one point. The fasts win, Sabra turns to the band, picks a song and off they go, shaking it up on the Moon's living room-sized dance floor.

Tonight’s personnel is awesomely talented. Roger Cash, mandolin; Joel Savoy, guitar; Joe Vidrine, standup bass; Danny Devilliers, drums; David Greeley, fiddle; and Sabra Guzman, guitar and lead vocal.

Mardi Gras is in full swing in Lafayette, LA. The Blue Moon Saloon is a cool place in more ways than one. The back room opens to an outdoor patio. The band is playing with their coats on, many of the dancers are layered up too. Who cares? It’s Mardi Gras week. Lafayette is filling up with dancers from afar who genuflect at the various stages around town playing fabulous music.

After Sabra and The Get Rights finish their set, a bunch of dancers head for the Artmosphere Bistro. Just in case you haven't had your fill of country swing, Chas Justus and The Jury is holding court in this bar/dance hall/ social mecca a three minute walk away. In between the classic swing, they put down some great slow bluesy numbers, with Chris Miller’s wailing tenor sax encouraging intimate encounters on the dance floor. The dance floor is packed. No need to wear your coat inside here.

Chas Justus - Guitar & Vox; Paul Anastasio - Fiddle; Chris Miller - Tenor Sax & Clarinet; Daniel Coolik - Electric Mandolin & Fiddle; Eric Frey - Bass & Vox; Glenn Fields - Drums & Vox

Megan Brown, Kelli Jones Savoy, Cindy McDermott, lovely harmonies

Versatile and creative, every member of this band and the Get Rights plays with other groups around town. Playing different genres or the same genres with different musicians gives each a chance to groove in different ways. For listeners or dancers, this is a definition of heaven.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Mardi Gras Ball and Burlesque: A Tribute to Allen Toussaint

Magnificent Fantastic Mardi Gras Ball and Burlesque in memory of the legendary Allen Toussaint
ONCE Ballroom at Cuisine en Locale in Somerville
156 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA
Saturday, January 30, 2016 at 8:00 PM - Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 1:00 AM

The announcement read: “Saturday, January 30, 2016 A Mardi Gras Ball—and loving tribute to Allen Toussaint one of the great geniuses of recordings, arranging, composing, and producing--PLUS a benefit for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. Shaun Wolf Wortis & The Legendary Vudu Krewe large R&B band with special guests Jed Parish, Merrie Amsterberg, Carla Ryder, Chris Cote, and Boston BeauTease.
Everyone who walks through the door gets a Fan Admission pass to The Great Burlesque Exposition the following week!”

I didn’t click the link to The Great Burlesque Exposition but I signed up for the show in a heartbeat. Allen Toussaint is in my personal music Hall of Fame, cemented by a show at Scullers Jazz Club in 2009. He’s in much more elevated Halls of Fame - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 1998, Louisiana Hall of Fame 2009, Blues Hall of Fame 2011 and awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2013.

He died in November after performing a set in Spain, and at 77 he was still firing on all cylinders. The New Orleans City Council unanimously passed a resolution declaring Thursday, January 14 to be 'Allen Toussaint Day' on what would have been his 78th birthday.

Saturday night, listening and dancing to a big-assed R&B band doing homage to Mr. Toussaint was all I cared about.  


That changed when a lovely lass wearing a huge pair of feathered wings clipped to her arms and little else stepped up in front of the band stand and did a glorious sinewy strip tease act ending with her rear end peeking from beneath the feathers as she took a bow.


The Boston Academy of Burlesque Education sent a half dozen of its “students” from the Boston BeauTease Burlesque Troupe to practice the fine art of strip tease as an enticement to head to the Great Burlesque Exposition this weekend.

Exposition is the key word here. During several intervals, the lasses, to the accompaniment of the all too willing band, shimmied and shook their goods right down to their pasties and g strings…including one artist who got her tassels twirling in opposite directions….a stunning piece of mammary gymnastics.

In an age where hard core pornography is a click away, these women with saucy smiles, batting eyelashes, and sexy, playful  grinds were fabulous, making sex feel like good clean fun. They all seemed to be learning from the same playbook. Each act featured stylishly pulling off their elbow length gloves with their teeth, then fetchingly stripping down to the bare minimum before a grand finale, pastie pizzazz and arse flashing.

I was flabbergasted that I’d danced with two of them, one a gamine twenty something wearing a smashing off-the-shoulder ruby colored dress and a six foot tall, big boned woman with a stack of sleek black hair and demure black knee length dress with black stockings,  before I realized they were in the Beautease corps.

In daily life, I’ll bet they’re teachers, bank analysts, entrepreneurs, and IT techies. We’ve all probably got an exhibitionist streak. Bravo for these women for reviving a nearly lost art form. If I weren’t going to be celebrating Mardi Gras in Lafayette, LA, I’d find a front row seat to watch the Boston Beautease strut their stuff.

The Boston BeauTease troupe was a small but fitting part of the evening’s tribute to Mr. Toussaint. Some of New Orleans famous early musicians, including Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton got their starts playing in brothels.

The All-Star cast of The Legendary Vudu Krewe large R&B band rocked out with four hours of Toussaint songs mixed with good ol’ rock n roll and oldies. The dance floor was a playpen all night for all sorts and styles of dancing, just the kind you see in New Orleans.

Boston itself had a hotbed of strip joints back in the day in Scollay Square and in “The Combat Zone” on Washington Street. I’d say that Mr. Toussaint, born and raised in New Orleans, would chuckle about his music being paired with a burlesque show.

Let the good times roll, indeed.  Long Live Allen Toussaint. 

Photos courtesy of BostonBeautease http://www.bostonbeautease.com