music

Blue Thursday

Jose Alvarez’s new CD has all the trap-

pings of a Los Blancos record, except it’s not a Los Blancos record. It’s Alvarez playing guitar with Los Blancos—frontman Colin

Aberdeen, bassist Steven T. Winston, key-

boardistMark Nanni, and drummerMark Tiffault—in the background. Still, listen to Diggin In (Toluca Rocket

Music) and all the memories of the first time you heard quite possibly Syracuse’s best band come flooding back. Suddenly, it’s summer and you’re standing in Clinton Square, sipping a cold one and tapping your toes with your sweetie by your side. Life is good in Alvarez-land, even though

he no longer calls Syracuse home. But he’ll be back Thursday, April 1, for a CD release party

at the cool venue Upstairs at the Dinosaur

Bar-B-Que, 246 W. Willow St. “Steve suggested I just send CDs,” Alvarez

Guest pests: Brad Koed, Amos VanderPoel and Charlo Kirk in SU Drama’s Room Service.

from the very good reason that they adapted it for film a year after the Broadway opening. But the filmmakers shrunk the show by more than half its running time to a wispy 78 minutes and stripped the talkative Brooklynese Faker Englund (played here by Robbie Simpson) of all dialogue so he could be turned into Harpo Marx. Missing also from the Marx Brothers film is the Depression-era grittiness, which director Robert Moss appears to have emphasized. Murray and Boretz might have been

unpretentious entertainers, better known for songs than stage plays, but early in the action they invite comparison with Russian theater through the émigré waiter Sasha Smirnoff (Amos VanderPoel). He has studied with Stanislavsky and speaks of Chekhov with familiarity. It is not too much of a stretch, nor should it ruin the fun, to think of the starving artists, going without food for days, as charac- ters borrowed from Nicolai Gogol or Maxim Gorky. One of the funniest bits, admittedly low comedy, is when the principals finally get something to eat, with Smirnoff’s help, and they gorge themselves. Smirnoff loses his waiter job for his generosity, but he secures a good role in Godspeed. Were Murray and Boretz still alive they’d

probably be gobsmacked to learn that their laff-riot is being used for instruction in the drama department of a major university. Times have changed in ways they could not have anticipated. Nearly all the characters in Room Service are types once familiar in vaudeville and burlesque, but they have long since disappeared. Bringing them back is like mastering the grammar of an extinct lan- guage. It takes hard work and an authoritative teacher. Director Moss grew up an hour away from Times Square when Broadway was still the people’s theater. Nearly all the players except for the

women are too young for their roles, but you forget that in 10 minutes. Lori Pasqualino as Christine, Miller’s girlfriend, starts in the thankless role as a straight woman to set up gags but leaps forward when given the chance, such as hiding evidence under the bed or playing a comic nurse to the fake sick man,

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playwright Davis. As the character of Chris- tine is cast in the play-within-the-play of God- speed, she fools us all by turning herself into Dolly Madison. Willowy Chelsea Gonzalez starts out merely as the tall, thin love interest of playwright Davis, but she deftly navigates some surprising turns. Although all the characters interact, they

tend to spark most as teams. Producer Miller, director Harry Binion (Brad Koed) and stage manager Faker Englund are most emphatically not the Marx Brothers, even if their roles were expropriated in the movie. Charlo Kirk’s Mill- er, the nominal romantic lead, doesn’t really tell gags but generates laughter through his aplomb and capacity for outrageous schemes. Neither is Koed’s Binion a gagster, but his moments of glory come in the second and third acts when he reveals an unexpected madcap side. Simpson’s Faker, on the other hand, speaks with a street accent and often makes damaging admissions, like citing his prison record. More supporting characters are purely comic,

including four scene-stealers. Lanky Chris Dwan’s nincompoop playwright Davis gets laughs even without iodine spots on his face. The hotel management team of milquetoast Joseph Gribble (Kerry Kazmierowicz) and bully Gregory (the aforementioned Raffy Ganimian) are a come- dy team all by themselves who could leave Room Service and take their show on the road. Hulking Peter Hourihan Jr. makes the reactionary Southern senator a star turn. Awards of meritorious service also go to the aforementioned Amos VanderPoel as Smirnoff, Nicholas Petrovich as the put-upon Jenkins and Christopher Hutton as the dogged pawn-shop repossesor. The odds are that this Syracuse University

Drama Department production looks much snazzier than the 1937 opening. Caroline Lon- don’s period costumes, Gette Levy’s art deco set and Marc Fisher’s superb lighting made that happen. Models for London’s costumes and Levy’s set, found in the Storch Theater lobby, invite close investigation.

This production runs through Saturday,

April 3. See Times Table for information.

—JAMES MACKILLOP

said from New York City, where his dad was visiting from Mexico City. “But I really want- ed to be on the scene. That’s how the thing at the Dinosaur came together.” Many in Syra- cuse consider Los Blancos the house band at the Dinosaur anyway, and they’ll perform a rip-roaring reunion when they hit the stage on Thursday. It’s been 11 years since

Alvarez parted with Los Blan- cos, but the connection remains strong. “Colin and I have been playing together for 18 years,” Alvarez said, “and he was the first person I connected with when I came to the states. He’s my favorite blues singer, and Los Blancos is my favorite band. I really, really like play- ing with those guys.” And it shows on the CD.

With Winston, Nanni and Tiffault’s strong foundation and Aberdeen’s vocals that range from playful (“Queen Bee”) to evocative (“I’ll Be Your Man”), it’s all held together by Alva- rez’s prominent guitar work. So despite their presence,Diggin In isn’t really a Los Blancos record at all. “It has my guitar,” Alva-

IDLE CHATTER

will be opening on Thursday. “He was kind enough to come and do a couple songs on the CD,” Alvarez said. “He just sounds great. He gets so close to Little Walter.” Alvarez, who now lives in San Antonio,

Texas, has been playing with Simien’s Zydeco Experience for the past six years. And because of that, he can now call himself a Grammy Award winner, since the group’s Live! Worldwide (Aim Records) won in 2008 in the brand-new Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album category. He first heard Simien play in 1991 in his

hometown of Mexico City. “My mother took me to see him; the show was two blocks from where we lived. A lot of people were there for the blues and didn’t really know what to make of zydeco. I don’t think zydeco is played a lot in Mexico City. It’s an interesting experience, when you’re expecting the blues.” You’d be right to be expecting a lot of

blues on Thursday, after which Los Blancos, with Alvarez, will be heading out on a four- stop tour, to Dayton, Ohio; Angola, Ind.; Cleveland; and Rochester. “I’m looking for- ward to that,” he noted. But consider yourselves lucky, Syracuse

music fans, that this CD release party is also the premiere of the CD: You’ll be hearing the

Jose Alvarez: The guitarist (second from left) with his Los Blancos buddies on Thursday at the Dino.

rez says simply of the CD, “which their latest releases haven’t had and it’s cranked up. I wanted to make it a guitar record, more than usual, so I made the guitar loud. I wanted that to be the differentiating factor, but I wanted Los Blancos on it. I get to do my songs and I get to play behind songs that I love performed by people that I love.” Hence the opening instrumental number, a

o

toe-tapping, guitar-inflected jaunt called “Fen- nel St. Frost.” “I wanted to make a point of it,” Alvarez said of putting his axe front and center, “even though it transitions into more of a lyric-driven song-oriented format. It’s prob- ably the last song we recorded, and it turned out to be the kickoff track.” More than the presence of Los Blancos,

though, Diggin In gets a heaping dose of kick-ass blues with zydeco accordion player

Terrance Simien and Syracuse’s own Pete

McMahon on harmonica. In fact, McMahon

songs first, in addition to Los Blancos clas- sics. “I’ll do a little rehearsal with Los Blan- cos before the show, and we’ll put in some stuff that we haven’t played before. But I know that we can pull it off. Obviously, we’ll play some old Los Blancos, and we’ll try to play everything that’s on the record. “It’ll be a good time, I hope. Colin has

always been very good about including any- body that shows up and putting them in the mix. People can expect a lot of blues and a lot of the old Latin cuts that we used to do. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? It’ll be a jama- rama for sure; it’ll be just a hootenanny.” The Dinosaur’s upstairs doors open at 8

p.m.; the show starts at 8:30 p.m. Advance tickets cost $15 and include a copy of the CD. For more information, call 476-4937 or visit www.casablancos.com.

—MOLLY ENGLISH-BOWERS

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Syracuse New Times March 31 - April 7, 2010

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