Stage Review: Squonk makes joyful, and a little tart, noise unto city
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(skwonk) Pittsburgh dialect; v. to make a joyous noise; adj. noisy, colorful, funny, outrageous; proper n. used only in combination, as in Squonk Opera, a musical performance collaborative that squonks.
Larry RippelThe grand finale of Squonk Opera's "Pittsburgh: The Opera."
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Squonk Opera's 'Pittsburgh: The Opera'
Where: Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, 5941 Penn Ave., East Liberty.When: 2 and 8 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Sunday.Tickets: Free for Pittsburgh Roars passholders, $5 for other Pittsburghers, $30 for Clevelanders, $50 for Seattle-ites; 412-372-4263.With Squonk Opera, the critic's task is the same as that faced by everyone else: How do you describe these guys to your friends?
"The performance art-bar band of your brightly fevered dreams," I once called it, or something like that. But that doesn't even begin to suggest the oddity of their instrumentation and score or the verve of their Monty Pythonesque design, all of which rise to elaborate constructions of weird imagination and naive beauty.
And what about their video accompaniment, which, like everything else, is both sophisticated and charmingly homemade? Or their ambitious texts, or elaborate, even epic, narrative structures?
Squonk is an alternative rock band that dramatizes itself with spectacle and comedy ranging from ironic to pratfall. "Crackpot modernists," I've called them, "cartooning Michelangelos ... beauties, geeks and crazies! Dream and fantasy! ... the kind of genre-twisting arts experience that the Cultural Trust devotes serious money to importing from oceans away and calling an International Festival."
But ultimately, Squonk Opera remains indescribably sui generis.
Now they're back with their newest work, "Pittsburgh: The Opera," a kind of hometown variety show very different from the elaborate intellectual narrative of their recent "Burn" and "Rodeo Smackdown," with their goofy-artsy borrowings from Dante and Greek myth.
"Pittsburgh: The Opera" is, as I once described another Squonk show, an "entertaining cross between a Kennywood outing ... and an interactive video installation." Its 20 varied segments are loosely united only by a focus on celebrating Pittsburgh and simultaneously lampooning the idea of someplace-specialness, as in the video participation of Rick Sebak, Video Laureate of Pittsburgh, whose Pittsburgh praise includes a touch of irony about the excesses of hometown pride.
That gentle mockery starts at the top of the show with images of the cosmos and a mock-heroic voice-over lauding Pittsburgh in the fulsome, formal documentary English accent of stage director Rick Kemp.
Soon enough the band members burst onstage through a giant paper drum -- composer Jackie Dempsey (keyboards), designer Steve O'Hearn (flute, Tyrolean trumpet, sax, wind synth), percussionist Kevin Kornicki (we watch him hew down a giant tree to carve his drumsticks) and guitarists Nathan Wilson and David Wallace.
Then a new day dawns as a bright sun slides up a giant, Venetian blind video screen to emerge as the face of vocalist Christina Acosta.
Next, O'Hearn settles into a pedantic reading of Pittsburgh history while Acosta plants little houses on a map of the three rivers and a bored Dempsey daydreams of past glories. That dream includes my own flowery Post-Gazette description of her from 10 years back, which is what probably got me thinking along the initial lines of this review.
Needless to say, I'd describe her differently now. Her music is still the heart of Squonk, a soulful, driving, often melodic, sweet-and-sour score, but she also looms large as a genial housemother, with a smile that includes us all.
Subsequent numbers include mock statistics, youthful dancers, a jaunty road trip in a little car backed by video, a parody fashion show, an umbrella dance, home movies, bubble machine, industrial footage, disco memories, audience participation, you name it.
A grand finale includes a giant Pittsburgh globe (complete with Atlas), balloons, heavenly bodies and flying angels.
Everything is intertwined with or laid over Dempsey's music (and one piece by Kornicki), usually with Acosta's unearthly vocals. The lyrics (by Dempsey and Acosta) are mainly unintelligible, but I can't tell whether that's a loss or not -- doubtless there's wit we miss, but an ample lyrical line is supplied by the flow of visual images.
The dominant presence is the music, now sweet, now strident. But continuity is provided by snippets of interviews with Pittsburghers known and unknown, whether funny, banal or touching.
And backing the whole and often elbowing its way to center stage is a nearly continuous video accompaniment by Buzz Miller, assisted by O'Hearn, Wallace and others.
I'll cite two video numbers among many. In "A Map of the Heart," kids' versions of a map of Pittsburgh tumble ceaselessly out of each other, and images from them take on separate life and dance accompaniment to the music. And in "Those Who Have Gone," old family photos form a flowing, multilayered montage. Add in some complex graphics and striking lighting effects by Bob Steineck and you have an erratic visual feast.
Complete in under 90 minutes, "Pittsburgh" is not seamless but a goofy, lumpy stew -- or, given its silly joy, a dessert table with everything jumbled together.
It's Pittsburgh.
The fact that Squonk plans to tour it to other cities, localizing it with new video segments, just reminds us of the paradoxical universality of local pride. But whatever else those other cities have, Squonk belongs to us.
First Published June 24, 2006 12:00 am
