Rocking-chair rockers

>> With their acclaimed Road to Heaven, the seasoned Young at Heart Chorus members kick dirt in the face of kicking the bucket

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

Twenty-five senior citizens from Northampton, Massachusetts, a group of traditional Cambodian folk singers and some homeless punks are hanging out in a park. Though this could easily be the elaborate set up for one of your dad's dinner-table knee-slappers, this is the true-to-life plot of a theatrical venture called Oh No, A Condo! put on by the Young at Heart Chorus, back in '88.

"In the late '80s, gentrification was taking place as a result of Reaganomics and old people were getting kicked out of affordable housing to make way for condo development," explains Bob Cilman, Y@H's middle-aged founder and musical director. "Around that time there were a lot of Cambodian refugees coming into Massachusetts and there'd be the punks in the park, who are generally displaced people. It was a meditation on displacement, and a very funny show."

In fact, many of the productions they have put on since its inception in '84 have involved collaborations with myriad community groups, from breakdancing kids from the projects ('84's Boola Boola Bimini Bop) to a gay men's choir ('94's Flaming Saddles, which Cilman describes as "a stunning, disco, cowpoke, western thing--a big, big hit with audiences") to a Puerto Rican song and dance troupe to and the Smith College women's choir. All this because Cilman wanted to spice up a meal site.

"I worked at a meal site for the elderly in a low-income-seniors' housing project. I got a job as a kind of maître d', sort of there to keep people happy. Somebody brought in a piano and I got some people together to sing and it took off from there."

But war-time favourites weren't Cilman's bag and he soon had his blue-rinse protégés warbling out rocking renditions of pop classics by the likes of James Brown and the Clash, songs their kids used to dig. But they didn't stop at the simple musical review format. Touching on '60s classics and Vaudeville ditties, the Y@Hs also tie in deeper messages, usually about community issues or life lessons--all the while doing their best to escape the dirty clutches of contrived sentimentality or cheap clichés.

"Road to Heaven's all about older people saying 'We're gonna fight back, survive, live in dignity,'" says Cilman. "The show actually works better when performed for young people--it's like they stop seeing the chorus just as grand parents and they start to picture themselves as old people."

Acrobatic feats and black humour

Indeed, the fact that most Y@H members have spent more than seven decades on this planet has not made them succumb to a life of Depends-wearing and slumped-over complaint-spouting. One octogenarian man dresses in drag to sing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." A woman of the same age sports a handsome bee costume and does the splits. But acrobatics and gender-bending aside, our wrinkled friends are not ignoring the cold, hard facts of old age--they're transcending them.

"After Road to Heaven we're reviving a piece called Louie Lou I, a piece about the French Revolution that we first did in '91," Cilman recounts. "Seventeen of our people have died since then--that's something we can't ignore. We can do dark subjects, but we've got to keep our black humour. We struggle with this sometimes." But as the Y@H crew stare down mortality, the fruits of their struggle continue to appear on stage to communicate ideas of life and death.

Roy Faudree, the company's co-director, says he can't quite figure out why audiences have been so moved by the Y@H, but he's got a hunch that it's the death thing. "It might be that we're so afraid of growing old and dying that when a show flirts with these subjects in a fun way, it kind of puts us off balance," Faudree muses. "These songs are part of popular culture. But you hear the lyrics more clearly when they're sung by a person who's in the last 10 to 20 years of their life. It's like having a new reading of them. Everyone knows the Rolling Stones song 'You Can't Always Get What You Want.' But when you hear a 97-year-old woman sing it, there's something very different being said than what you remember Mick Jagger might have meant when he sang it as a 20 or 30-something man."

To the outside world, Faudree, who's collaborated with New York City avant-garde theatre collective the Wooster Group for 20 years and who runs his own No Theatre company, may seem out of place in the context of an old folks' musical revue. Faudree begs to differ.

"That's one thing I make clear: this is not social service," he asserts. "I in no way think of this as anything other than an interest in these performers as artists. I tell them that all the time, that I wouldn't be working with them if they didn't want to be making something good." Clearly, the dedication of the chorus members is nothing short of Herculean--in the face of hip replacement, cataracts or worse, they forge on, whether it's touring community centres in western Massachusetts or crossing the pond to Europe four times in as many years.

Ear for the absurd

Elaine Fligman, 78, who's been singing and dancing since the age of four, has been with Y@H since '88. Fligman and her late husband used to perform together at resorts in the northeast, some 40 years ago. She's just gotten back from Norway where they performed for the King and Queen and incorporated A-ha's '80s emotional scorcher "Take on Me." The crowd, apparently, went berserk. But Fligman is used to the adoration afforded them by European audiences by now.

"When we first went over to Rotterdam in '97, they told us 'Now, don't expect the same reaction over there. Everybody is very sedate in Rotterdam,'" she says in a mock serious tone. "But, my goodness, they nearly tore the theatre apart." On this most recent Norwegian jaunt, they were treated like superstars and recognized in public "even without our Young at Heart jackets on," says Fligman.

And as far as the ever-revolving cast of the chorus goes, this septuagenarian with the spirit of a sprightly lass has a predictably sunny outlook. "We've lost some people, gained some people--it's probably even. We've been very fortunate to get new people, but never to replace the people we lost; they have different things to offer."

As she talks of the various Y@H shows she's been in over the years, her affinity for the absurd comes through. "There was Kiss Me Goodnight Eddy, which is a title that is totally irrelevant to everything in the play; there was no Eddy character, not even a member of the chorus named Eddy, although we've since acquired one. It was with the Smiths College girls--my God, they'll kill me--I mean, women's choir, and I got to do a duet of 'Begin the Beguine.'"

She's equally enthusiastic about Flaming Saddles: "I loved that show--it was so much fun! Of course, everyone assumed us elderly people would not be willing to work with a gay choir. Ha! Were they ever wrong! We got to know that they were a really nice bunch and they got to see that we weren't just a bunch of crazy old people!" In keeping with Fligman's unwavering optimism, she's convinced our fair city will be won over just as easily. "We haven't hit an audience yet that hasn't come around our way," she boasts.

Their Montreal performance, part of the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques, will be Road to Heaven's North American debut outside their Massachusetts stomping ground. And of course, they've formulated a personalized medley as a tribute to our homegrown talent. "We're starting out with Celine Dion, as a goof, and moving on quickly to Leonard Cohen and some Québécois classics," Cilman divulges. "Hopefully we'll get it right and won't be run out of the country."

Road to Heaven at the Salle Pierre Mercure of the Centre Pierre-Péladeau June 4-7, 7pm, $25-35, Info: 871-2224