Death by mediocrity
Murder Ballads, based on the songs of Nick Cave, is well-acted, but Cave's work is not well-served.
By MARTY CLEAR, Times Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 7, 2003
Jobsite Theater's latest offering is a bunch of plays about a bunch of songs about murder.
Murder Ballads, inspired by a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, isn't as bleak and depressing as it sounds, but it's not as profound or unsettling as it tries to be either.
The Jobsite people took nine of the 10 songs from Murder Ballads, a fierce and disturbing 1996 work that many people consider Cave's best, and designed performance pieces around them.
Most are pretty good, and almost all of them contain something worthwhile. But the pieces that are by far the worst are in the most important positions: first and last.
The opener gives us a straightforward version of Song of Joy, the first and darkest piece on the album, performed by a solo singer/guitarist to recorded backing music. The song, about a multiple murder, is powerful enough to stand on its own. Yet, in the Jobsite production, its effect is diluted by a series of silly tableaux and awkward movements by the ensemble.
There's some delicious gallows humor in Cave's songs and in several of the Jobsite adaptations. Just not the opening number, where the laughs are unintended.
After that, it takes a while to get into the flow of Murder Ballads, though some of the pieces work well.
In The Curse of Millhaven, Neil Gobioff and Shaun Paonessa turn Cave's eerie saga about a 14-year-old serial killer into a really funny sketch about a couple of slackers who try to steal the credit by confessing to a logic-impaired detective. The acting is strong throughout the evening, but Mark Trent and David C. Baker turn in two of the best performances in this piece.
Katrina Stevenson performs her own monologue that extrapolates Cave's Crow Jane. It's a little morbid and maybe even predictable, but Stevenson makes it work with a meaningful performance.
The rest of the show is so-so. There's a decent dance number based on Where the Wild Roses Grow; a wonderfully creepy recorded rendition of The Kindness of Strangers by Joe Popp, accompanied by an inconsequential and literal video; and a dumb but inoffensive piece purportedly based on O'Malley's Bar.
But the closing number, Death Is Not the End, leaves a bad aftertaste. It's certainly the weakest song on the album (and the last), and its treatment here, a drudging and zombielike dance, makes it even worse.
The show is undeniably inconsistent, but the acting is solid and Dickie Corley's lighting design is impressive. At the very least, the Jobsite people should be congratulated for their ambition in creating something distinctive.
PREVIEW
Murder Ballads runs through Aug. 17 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Shimberg Playhouse, 1010 N MacInnes Place, Tampa. Curtain is at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $15.50 plus service charge. Student tickets are $13 plus service charge with a student ID. 813 229-7827 or www.tbpac.org
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