James on West 44th Street - Byrne basically took over the theater after Springsteen’s summer run closed on Labor Day weekend - does invite a brief comparison between the two.īroadly speaking, “American Utopia” is the same show that Byrne toured in 2018, adapted to Broadway the following year, and made into a Spike Lee-directed film a year after that - which is great, because it’s an artistically brilliant and thought-provoking performance that deserves to be seen by many more people (even if Byrne is probably staging it much longer than he’d originally planned). Of course, they’re dramatically different shows, but the fact that both staged their second runs at the St.
#American utopia soundtrack how to#
It is insensitive to seem too happy to be back? Is it too much of a downer to dwell on the tragedies of the past 18 months? And if the appropriate tone is somewhere in the vast gap between the two, how does one navigate it?Īlthough the recent relaunch of rock-oriented Broadway shows by David Byrne and Bruce Springsteen in many ways had an easier return than touring acts - weeks-long residencies in a single theater involve little travel and equipment-moving - both faced a huge challenge in how to adapt and incorporate the pandemic into their thematic performances.
While it’s a pretty small problem in the context of the larger challenges presented by the return of live music, how a performer addresses the pandemic during a performance is no small matter.
0 kommentar(er)
