The Emperor's New Clothes
By David Budin

I’m about to embark on a dangerous balancing act.

I’ve noticed a trend in Cleveland that has created a couple of questions. With increasing frequency, I’ve seen audiences go wild for truly mediocre shows. Does this mean that we’ve lowered the bar? And, if so, is this a Cleveland thing, or is it also happening in the other “Clevelands,” like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and St. Louis?

And what about the bigger and allegedly more-sophisticated cities, like New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco? Has the whole country trashed its standards, or just Cleveland? And either way, why is this happening?

I saw two shows at my favorite venue, Cain Park – the B.B. King concert and the musical Hair. Cain Park’s general manager Erin Cameron made brilliant moves in deciding to stage Hair and to book B.B. King. She and her staff do a great job, especially in the face of hard economic times and increasing competition from more and larger venues in the region.

She was proven correct about both shows, in that they were overwhelmingly successful, commercially. The fact that they failed artistically certainly was not her fault, or that of the venue. There were different reasons for each.

B.B. King is a living legend. In his prime, there were few better at singing and playing the blues. This year he turned 80. He has a few medical problems. After two long, bland songs by his band – the kind of band you can hear anywhere - he finally comes out on stage, sits on a chair and every once in a while he sings a little, and a little less often he plays some guitar licks.

When he sings and plays (which, by the way, he never does at the same time), he sounds really great. But the vast majority of his show consists of him talking. About nothing. Long and frequent introductions of the same band members. Repeated overlong thank-yous. Rambling, mildly amusing, repetitive, meaningless stories – the kind of stuff I used to hear the third or fourth opening acts doing at Leo’s Casino in the late-‘60s, something about the differences between men and women, all rooted deeply in pre-1970s chauvinism, despite his acknowledgement of that as an odd way to justify it.

I saw B.B. King live for the first of several times in 1968, at the Café Au Go Go in New York’s Greenwich Village. He and his trio tore through song after scorching song, with B.B. shouting out the blues and wailing on the guitar throughout. His current show is a sad, pathetic spectacle compared to that.

“Well,” someone said, “he’s 80 years old.” That’s right. And when he walked out on stage, he got a standing ovation, which he deserved, for his lifetime of achievement. But why is he still touring if he can’t really do it any more? Or why don’t they call it something else? Maybe “The New B.B. King Mostly Talking and Doing Embarrassing Novelty Songs by a Living Legend Show,” perhaps?

“Well,” someone else said, “he has a great band.” First of all, no he doesn’t. They’re okay. They’re loud, professional and tight, but not funky, soulful or bluesy. Can every one of them play better than I can? Definitely. But I’ve heard no-name blues bands on a slow Wednesday at Buddy Guy’s Blues Club that were far better than his band. I’ve heard local blues bands better than his band. And even if they were a great band, no one paid $60 to hear them; they paid to hear B.B. King.

I understand that he’s old. But out of two hours, you got about 20 minutes of B.B. King blues - 30 seconds or so of greatness at a time. For me, it would have been much more satisfying if he had put those 20 minutes of music together, played it and then left.

At the end of the show, the sold-out crowd leapt to its feet and cheered and screamed for an encore. On my way out, I heard many people asking, “Wasn’t that a great show?” If you were one of those people, you sure weren’t asking me. On the other hand, when people did ask me, and I told them, I was surprised by how many agreed, but didn't say anything because of the reaction by everyone else.

The night before B.B. King, I saw Hair at Cain Park. Hair is a musical play about a bunch of hippies in New York City in 1968. It opened in New York around that time. I was a hippie in New York at that time. I didn’t see the show when it opened because, well, because I was a hippie. In fact, I never saw the show, ever, until now.

Even though I was a hippie in New York in 1968, I didn’t understand anything going on in the show. At first, I thought it may have been the production. But on my way into the theater, I ran into Cleveland’s own Bill Rudman, one of the world’s foremost experts in musical theater. He told me that this was the quintessential production of Hair. Okay, so I defer to Rudman; it’s not the production. And, certainly, every single cast member sang and danced great, and overflowed with youthful energy and enthusiasm.

So all that must mean is that the show itself stinks. There are lots of songs in Hair, but only about six are memorable – those were hit records in 1969. That's still five songs better than Rent, but that’s another story. And speaking of story, Hair doesn’t seem to have one, which might be okay if it had more memorable, songs.

A typical scene in Hair: A girl who’s already been onstage for an hour goes off and comes back on and everyone’s surprised to see her. She starts passionately kissing one guy, then suddenly stops and seems to be mad at him. Then she starts kissing another guy, but stops and, I think, says she doesn’t like him. Then she starts almost having sex with the first guy, but then he seems to be mad at her. Then she goes back to the second guy, but something else happens that I can’t remember. Then she gives the first guy a shirt, and he puts it on and he looks pretty good in it. But then he rips it in half and I didn’t get why. She gets mad about it (well, that I understood) and she sings, “How can people be so heartless… ,” etc, from one of those very few memorable songs, “Easy to Be Hard.”

I realized that when Rudman said this was the quintessential production of Hair, he might not have meant, necessarily, that it was good – just that it was as good as it could be. In the show’s program notes, Rudman points out how groundbreaking Hair was when it first appeared, and I can appreciate that. But, as with B.B. King, just because something was historically significant, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good. Especially of it’s not.

After the show, I talked to a few of the actors. I truthfully told them I thought they were great. They were; I was very impressed with everyone in the production. I just got nothing out of the show. I was surprised, again, by how many people said something along those same lines after I expressed myself. ”I am so glad to hear you say that. I thought I was the only one who felt that way.”

That night, and the next day, when I was back at Cain Park, I talked to 15 people who had seen Hair. Only three of them said they loved the show; 12 said the same things I said. So who were all those people who were screaming a cheering at the end of those performances, and many other shows I’ve seen?

Are people just starved for entertainment? They shouldn’t be, not with all that’s available to us in Cleveland.

Have people’s standards been lowered somehow? It doesn’t seem that this should be the case, because we get not only every touring musical act and Broadway show here; plus tons of local productions and musical artists.

Are people afraid to admit their negative feelings about a show, seeing that most everyone else appears to love it? That may be the case. It may be like the Emperor’s New Clothes.

I think it’s wonderful that venues book these kinds of shows. I think it’s wonderful that people attend them, and, in the case of these two shows, attend in large numbers. And I’m glad that people enjoy these shows. But I also wish that they would attend shows by other, less well known artists, and new plays that don’t have the name recognition of Hair – or Spamalot or The Producers.

The best concert I saw this year at Cain Park was the one by guitarist and singer Harry Manx and pianist Michael Kaeshammer. These are two of the most talented and unusual musicians you’ll ever see. The show was so satisfying that even on this hot, humid evening, I could have sat through a show that was twice as long. Unfortunately, I was one of what looked like maybe 150 people in this 2,000-seat theater.

You see a lot of that kind of thing around here, at Cain Park and every other venue that offers lesser-known artists. I’ve been to amazing, once-in-a-lifetime shows at places like the Beachland Ballroom, or in their Tavern, when the audience numbered more like 35 or 50. And there are about 20 theater companies in town, who all try to present interesting and often innovative works. Most of them are struggling, to one degree or another. Go to some local shows this season – not for the theaters’ sake, but for your own.

And Cleveland has some really great blues musicians. If you went to the B.B. King concert, now go check out Cleveland’s own blues scene. You’ll be amazed at how good B.B. King wasn’t. (:divend:)