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Mark Schweickart
I just watched the presentation on NetFlix of Springsteen's always sold-out Broadway show, and clearly understand why it was so successful. I've always been a big fan, seen him a few times in concert, but hey, this is something totally different. Those concerts were just music, great music to be sure, but this Broadway show is music and poetry and prose on scale rarely experienced – the unofficial American poet laureate who speaks for all of us, and to all of us, as he takes us through his autobiography in a language that is at once both immediately accessible and profoundly, head-shakingly, beautifully poignant. Who wouldn't see a bit of themselves, as this New Jersey Catholic boy, this American Everyman, describes his blue-collar, hard-working, hard-drinking Irish father who was, as he says, "his greatest hero, and his greatest foe;"? Or his always sunny, Italian mother who counter-balanced the oft-depressed father with her hard-work, her love of dance, and whose high heels clicking on the linoleum floor fascinated the little boy accompanying her as they walked through the dark after-hours law offices where she was a secretary. Or the description of meeting Ron Kovic, author of Born on the 4th of July and how this inspired his own Born in the USA, delivered here in a version just using an acoustic twelve-string guitar, which he uses to deliver an absolutely inspired, virtuosic lead-in to his heart-rendring, searing growl of a howl that embodies what that horrible war meant to so many of us, especially to those of us, like Springsteen himself, who chose not to be part of that war, but who also can't look away from what might have been. Or the way he describes reaching the age where one is on the cusp, now a young man about to become a father himself, while still being an angry son dealing with a finally repentant father, a father who comes bearing wisdom – do we become ghosts to our children, haunting their every step, or do we become instead, ancestors, offering guidance to those steps? Or as the song he performs at this point says – his most fervent wish for his children will be: "may your sins be your own." Or the timelessness of The Ghost of Tom Joad echoing in every homeless person one sees, or the haunting tribute to 9-11, which is never mentioned, but is inescapably the subject of The Rising. I don't know if it is fair to say this, since his songs have always stunned me with their poetic power, but in this show, it is the writing and performing of the monologues between the songs that is even more powerful, if that is possible. Then put the two together and you have something quite extraordinary, and not to sound too hokey, but it is almost religiously transcendent at times.
I suppose I could go on and on paraphrasing what I just saw, but that's only going to do an injustice to the real thing. A one man show like none I have ever seen before, accompanied only by himself on guitar or piano. If you were a Springsteen fan, you will love this. If you were not, you will be. Please check it out. You will not be disappointed.
P.S. I have one small performance criticism, that may help you non-Springsteen fans understand one of his songs done here. It is a song about the masks we wear in life especially in the way we often hide much from our closest partners in life, and it all builds to the key line: "Is that you baby, or just a brilliant disguise?" My complaint is that unless you know this song, I doubt you could ever guess, from the way he sings it here, that the last two, and most important words, are "brilliant disguise." Otherwise, a flawless performance on all of the other songs, even though most are done in a way quite different from the original recordings, since there is no band backing him.
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