Good news/bad news: CBGB will remain in its location in the Bowery for another year, but get this:

My history with the punk club is minimal: Chuck Young took Anne and me there once, in what must have been 1979. The headliner was a band called Shrapnel, and the lead singer did one song with his head poking out of a tank turret. Oh, and I remember one song title from that date: "St. Louis Sucks." We saw Cheetah Chrome sitting at the bar.

So I'm not on what you would call intimate terms with the place. But Las Vegas? Gimmeabreak.

(Thanks to Gothamist.)

posted: 1:40:34 PM  

The Reales serve up an endearing light musical entertainment based on the gentle children's stories by Arnold Lobel from the 1970s and 1980s (not, for those of us still wedged into the Victorian era, the superficially similar stories of Kenneth Grahame). Will Gartshore and Steve Tipton play the titular pair as a sort of wetlands Bert and Ernie, with an ensemble of three (among them the versatile comedienne Sherri L. Edelen) filling out the roles of fifteen other forest creatures. Costumes by Rosemary Pardee are suggestive rather than Taymoresque: a chunky cardigan, fuzzy hat, tights, and fur-trimmed ankle boots (all in shades of gray) are sufficient to give us Erin Driscoll's pert Mouse, for instance. Movement styles are likewise only sketched, not full-on Method: Gartshore's Toad uses a loping hop to get from place to place; Bobby Smith's Snail has a priceless short-strided walk that takes a whole verse of a song to carry him halfway across stage.

This is a short piece, perhaps 95 minutes of playing time, punctuated with an intermission for the benefit of younger audience members. This means that the pleasant "Cookies" has to carry the weight of a first-act finale, which it can't quite do. And the narrative is extremely easy to follow, even for the most inattentive midweek season subscribers. The deepest psychology in the play is perhaps in Snail's second-act "I'm Coming Out of My Shell," a glam bit of out-of-the-closet whimsy. But where else in town can you see and hear three tap-dancing Birds, dressed in orange zoot suits and singing in 1940s three-part close harmony?

posted: 9:54:10 AM