two shows

[evesarena]

Last night, I saw the Warsaw Village Band. I'm not sure what to say about the music, except that it was pretty odd and I liked it. What I really liked were the outfits. Some publicity photo made them look pretty dowdy. In person, they were perhaps trying less to be seductive than any other musicians I've seen, but they were young and definitely not, well, dowdy. They were all wearing clothing that seemed to have extraneous straps and buckles, but subtly so. Two of the guys wore cargo pants. The guy playing approximately bodhran with a wide martial arts stance and a drum in his face wore a small tambourine dangling from his belt in a harness that reminded me of a linzertorte. I don't know what the purpose of it was (it didn't seem to be designed for a quick draw, and I don't think he ever played it.) The guy playing jazzed up tupan with a cymbal and an optional triangle attachment made of an old drumstick and gaff tape wasn't wearing cargo pants, but had ankle length pieces of fabric with cargo pockets dangling from his belt down the outside of each leg. Perhaps he stored the triangle there, I never saw. The three women wore shapeless clothing with no skin showing and didn't smile, and the waif in the middle came on in a hood with a ruff of back gauze trimmed with silver around her neck. The other two women had wild hair and looked a bit witchy. All three sang staring into space with this weird intense focus while the men quietly rocked out behind them. Between that and the sea-green, chartreuse and red lighting, it was certainly visually memorable.

Tonight, I saw another version of All's Well. It had less entertaining Italians than the Yale Rep version (which I recommend), but wins the all-time best use of bananas prize.