Unfortunately inoffensive

>> There's little that stings in Nine Songs

by AMY BARRATT

Jailhouse Rock on a Friday night. Outside, the wind'll freeze any exposed appendage in 10 seconds flat, but inside it's beginning to feel stuffy from the press of bodies and clouds of smoke. So who's up? Some multiply-pierced local band with a name that evokes venereal disease and salad bars? Not tonight, Josephine.

Tonight a rather middle-aged crowd has shown up to watch Nine Songs for the Middle Class, billed as "an evening of political Kabarett." That spelling needs some explanation. It seems the writer/composer of this piece, Nick Carpenter, spent time in Berlin studying the scene and discovered that upscale Cabaret is about jugglers and leggy dancers, while the grungy Kabarett features nasty political satire. It's the latter that he came home determined to share with a Canadian audience. In an article he wrote last spring, Carpenter explained that, "Where something like This Hour has 22 Minutes slaps wrists, Kabarett breaks them."

Okay, bring it on. Three actor/singers--as well as Carpenter himself behind keyboards--appear onstage in evening wear. (Carpenter has named his company The Upper Class and the show is a co-production of the omnipresent Infinitheatre.) They break into a song warning us that we're bound to be offended by the evening's entertainment and suggesting that we'd better leave. Stephanie McNamara, a seasoned musical theatre performer, has the strongest voice, but Jeff Pufahl and Carly Street (isn't that a great name?) hold their own in the vocal-chords department and all three know how to tell a story in song.

Carpenter's writing is clever, but the warnings go on so long that instead of feeling offended, you begin to feel impatient for them to get on with it already and offend you. Somehow, working nasty thoughts into rhyme and meter seems to take the sting out of them. The prologue finally out of the way, we're launched into a story about a little girl (uh-oh) who says something her elders don't like and what happens to her as a result.

Yes, Nine Songs for the Middle Class is a parable, similar, though less ambitious in scope, to some of the Brecht-Weill musicals. And there's something inherently gentle about a parable. Remember that comparison to This Hour has 22 minutes? Well, at least Rick Mercer et. al. name names.

After all his promises, somewhere along the line Carpenter chickened out. He's ended up with a terribly general condemnation of that old punching bag, capitalism, that might have been daring had it debuted in 1930. In almost-2001, there's a quaintness to the exercise that is deadly. Carpenter's situation can perhaps best be summed up by an equally quaint phrase: hoist with his own petard.


Theatre pickings are slim during the holidays, but the latest installation of Contes Urbains is on at La Licorne until Dec. 23. This year, all of the short sketches set in Montreal during the Xmas season are penned by one playwright, Yvan Bienvenue. The content promises to be almost gritty enough for Scrooge himself. For something a little tamer, Usine C welcomes back Tsuru, a show for all ages, Dec. 26-Jan. 6.

Nine Songs for the Middle Class, last two shows Dec. 15-16, 8pm at Jailhouse Rock (30 Mont-Royal W.), $5-10. Reservations: 987-1774, ext. 104