Justin Vivian Bond in “Only an octave apart”
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Justin Vivian Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo in Only an octave apart.
Photo: Nina Westervelt
It is not quite fair to call the conversations between songs in Only an octave apart “to joke.” At least a third of the non-song material in this duo cabaret is just Anthony Roth Costanzo breaking up while Justin Vivian Bond goes outrageous. Viv, the hair of a blonde Eva Perón, dreams of the rewards they deserve, like loads of drugs and sexy boys. (Anthony laughs.) Viv forgets the words. (Anthony laughs.) Viv is standing there. (Anthony chuckles.) There are a lot of scripted motifs, like Costanzo’s archaic references to stage support. he’s used to international operas, but it’s this helpless, gurgling hysteria that sets the tone. “Do not make me laugh !” begged Costanzo. “That implies phlegm! “If you’ve always wanted to see the country’s best countertenor tickled to death by an alternative cabaret legend, now is your chance.
The original plan, they tell us, was to do a show, to press a CD, to release a single, to achieve fame. The shutdown turned those plans upside down and reversed, so they made the album first, and stage production at St. Ann’s Warehouse follows in its wake. It’s hard to say what it would have been 18 months ago, but I’m thankful they had to wait. All about the magnificent Only an octave apart feels tinged with stopping – the pale pink of its languor, the deep blue of its loneliness and the shimmering silver of our slightly uncontrollable emotional release.
Speaking of color, physical production itself is inundated with it. Costume designer Jonathan Anderson keeps the pair in lavish sparkling dresses, including a pair of stretch velvet dresses that appear to have teamed up with IM Pei’s pyramids. Director Zack Winokur, set designer Carlos Soto and lighting designer John Torres dress the stage as if it were also a diva, draping it in lively satins and muslins. The front curtain is electric blue taffeta, pulled apart to reveal a grotto of green velvet, supported by a gauzy gauze curtain, drawn in front of a silver lamé curtain. The backdrops do a sort of striptease, with each layer slowly pulling apart as the show goes on. The energy between Bond and Costanzo is sweet and insane, but the show still exudes sex, in part because of that naughty scene always slipping out of her dresses to step into something more comfortable.
The two voices of Bond and Costanzo couldn’t be more different. Bond’s trans-singer growl sounds like a thousand cigarettes, a million smoky bars. They can sharpen their clarinet tone into something almost feline, so songs can end on a wild howl instead of a note. Beauty swims in and out of Bond’s sound – sometimes their voices strain and break, sometimes (like in a medley of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” by Judy Garland and “Rainbow Sleeves” by Rickie Lee Jones) it vibrates to the room’s own resonance, and the air around you heats up. Costanzo, on the other hand, is high and pristine where Bond is low and dirty, precise where Bond slides like a high heel on the floor of a bar. He refers to the opera as his “safe space,” although listening to how he manipulates Purcell, Bizet, and Gluck like bare blades sounds quite dangerous.
Voices like these don’t blend together, at least not in the sense of sonically disappearing into each other. When the two sing together, as in the title song about the eight steps between their scales (âMy F is here! My F is here!â), Their sounds stand out. The contrast actually reinforces our appreciation: Nico Muhly’s rich arrangements treat them not like two instruments in a symphony but like a fanfare and a string quartet that have found a way to coexist on stage. They frolic around the canon of pop and opera, including songs through a Dido and In regards to a Dido and at one point playing a Sing in the rain-style lip sync game. If you clap loud enough – and you’d better or Bond will yell at you – you’ll hear their callback, a mix of “Walk Like an Egyptian” and that of Philip Glass Akhenaton. Costanzo played the doomed pharaoh in the production of Phelim McDermott at the Met, a role he will return to later this fall. “Walk like an Egyptian!” Bond educates, and Costanzo obligingly slips across the stage. Worlds collide; fireworks ensue.
As pleasant as it may be to hear them sing together, and as nourishing, you should go warned: solo tracks could ruin you. In Bond’s case, the “Rainbow” medley showcases a specific talent for heartbreaking charisma. Bond mentions their mantra several times – “Keep it shallow, keep it pretty, keep it moving” – but their real strength is Judy’s ability to freeze an audience in a painful moment, to keep them still and painful. . In his solo song, Costanzo sings Liszt’s setting to music of Goethe’s âÃber allen Gipfelnâ with tenderness and hesitation, as if the notes themselves were bruised. It’s a song about death and peace, which fits Costanzo’s bell tune so exactly that it is beyond my ability to describe it. When I look at my notes on this, they just say “as beautiful as silence”. I’m sorry, I know that doesn’t make sense.
I found myself thinking about Only an octave apart in terms of another piece of music being played in Brooklyn at the moment: the beautiful To cross at the Jack Postage Stamp Theater in Clinton Hill. Talented composer Justin Hicks presents his own autobiographical cabaret, paying homage to his preacher father. It has nothing of the glitzy luxuriance (or the full orchestra) of the St. Ann’s Warehouse spectacle. It’s the kind of disjointed production in which the audience has to set the pace because there is no rhythm section. Since accompanying himself, Hicks has installed a mirror on the piano so he can look at it and meet the eyes of his small audience sitting behind him. The show is essentially a secular service: we exchange wishes for health and peace with the people around us. This quality is not what they have in common – Only an octave apart would never do something so pastoral or sensitive. (âI’m not good at sincerity,â Bond says as Costanzo talks about what doing the show meant to him.) Instead, it was when Only an octave apart triggered the inevitable disco ball I remembered from Hicks’ mirror on his piano. Such different shows, but the reflections did the same job: they sent light into the audience, and the light bounced off people on stage. It’s a way to reconnect, isn’t it? After all this time.
Only an octave apart is in St. Ann’s Warehouse until October 3.
To cross is at Jack’s house until September 26th.
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