5 O’clock Bells, the story of Lenny Breau. a monologue that outweighs time and remains brilliantly intact!

5 O’clock Bells, the story of Lenny Breau. a monologue that outweighs time and remains brilliantly intact!

 

5 O’clock Bells.  photo Pierre Brault.s face book.

5 O’clock Bells,  written and performed by  Pierre Brault brings the artist back to the Gladstone theatre 12 years later in a show that has retained all its impeccable artistry since its world première in 2008, in the same theatre. Commissioned by the Great Canadian Theatre Company (gctc) in 2006. This  powerful portrait of Canadian Jazz Guitarist Lenny Breau who grew up in Maine,  with a  family of country musicians but whose exceptional musical and guitar-playing talents lead him to search out new forms of contemporary music, spear- headed cotemporary jazz  in other parts of the continent,  influenced especially by the work of Chet Atkins,who lead him to create a sound that brought  him world recognition as a brilliant and original  guitarist.

However, this show also confirms the international level of Pierre Brault’s talents as a respected solo performer who is able to capture and incarnate with rapid and incisive strokes of the voice and the body a whole microcosm of Breau’s world from his intimate family to his professional mentors and musical influences who played important roles in his musical evolution. The context is clearly brought into perspective on a near empty stage, as the space is  enhanced by sound and light:  the choices  of recording clips of Breau’s hypnotically smooth  musical style   and David Magladry’ss sculptural lighting design that sets the actor on the strings of  a guitar stretching from downstage to upstage as  the spaces light up when the body of the actor, as the musician,  fingers  the strings  that create all the hypnotic magic on his instrument. The result is a most smooth, seamless, flowing sound that confirmed the special quality of Breau’s touch, and the enormous strength of  the portraits of a whole microcosm of individuals who inhabited  this man’s world,  giving life to every moment of his existence as a man, as  an actor and as a musician.

This time, after so many years,   the result is a breathtaking performance that equates the actors physical performance with the delicately flowing guitar sounds, the corporeal gestures which highlight the sound and the choreography of the event,  carry the performance forward without a rough moment, without a disjointed sound just as the music flows forward. The actor and the music fuse together in a similar feeling of perfection. It was uncanny!

The  musician’s trajectory was in fact narrated by the different voices telling the Breau story at various points in his life .  The  kindly, concerned higher pitched  voice of his French Canadian mother,   dominated his youth,  while the father grew rougher and unpredictable , even jealous  as the talent of his young son overshadowed the father.  It became a thorn in that family performance as  the family  musical group sled towards a  breakdown  in their relationship. Brault  transformed himself suddenly into a bitter father who drank too much, whose affairs disturbed the mother. The mother became an unhappy but talented woman who recounted those disturbing discoveries of women in her husbands life just as Lenny, growning more and more popular through his radio appearances attracted new musical mentors and adoring women. His travelling on the road, from USA to Tornto, to  Los angeles and New York, as all the big music producers sought to audition Lenny and the actor flowed through those multiple voices  making each one distinctive enough to avoid any confusion in the mind of the audience. His many relationships with women became sorry dramas as Lenny showed he was not interested in playing to make money  to support his family  but wanted especially to create  new music  as he drove himself forward  in a race against death. In New York he came into contact with soft drugs , then hard drugs and there is an extremely  difficult moment where the author describes his first encounter with heroin as a deeply poetic experience that turns his life  into a nightmare when  he believes   he has  plunged into a new sense of reality that would allow him to produce wondrous new music.

The structure of the play comes full circle as it moves  to the beginning when Lenny is again on the phone with his mother saying he is trying to come home to Main but but cant make it  because he is not well..and she warns him to leave that woman   who has become so dangerous..a certain  Jewel  linked to strong religious beliefs, trust in God and her desire to keep  her claws in him so that he will protect her.  She has caught him with the drugs that he cannot escape.

As he sinks into drug induced comas which change his whole being, stumbling around in the loud blinking lights of the New York set that confuse him,  he  turns in circles, seeks everywhere and is incapable of finding his musical way.  The  result is tragic and incomprehensible.

The music was admirable but his personal life was destroyed and Lenny Breau  never came home  in spite of his mothers voice over the phone begging him to return.  That was the most poignant of all….

A most powerful representation of a life that operated on many levels showing how this actor has the unlimited capacity and enormous gift of adapting himself  to any kind of performance.

Written and performed by Pierre Brault,   February 11 -22. The Gladstone theatre.

Directed by Bian Quirt

Set and costumes by  Brian Smith

Lighting design by Martin Conboy

Guitarist and musical Consultant  Paul Bourdeau

Produced by Judi Pearl.

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