This afternoon ![[info]]()
agrumer and I went to the New School to see a new musical theater piece by the great Ben Katchor. It was part of the New School's first annual Arts Festival, whose theme is Noir. I enjoyed Katchor's first musical theater piece, The Carbon Copy Building, so I couldn't wait to see what he's done now.
This new piece is called A Checkroom Romance, and it revolves around the shadowy, mysterious world of coat checkrooms and the people who love them. The main character decides to build a coat checkroom in his apartment, and as you can probably guess from the fact that it's part of a festival devoted to Noir, things don't end well. (Among other things, he repurposes his only child's bedroom for the checkroom and she has to sleep in a sofabed in the living room. She's about ten. Katchor's graphics for this scene clearly allude to the old Castro Convertibles commercial (check out Uncle Miltie making fun of the commercial, which goes back to 1948! I had no idea).
I have been a fan of Katchor since my first exposure to Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, and I'm happy to say that the Katchor hallmarks are present: the Dickensian character names (Lena Basilica, the coat check attendant at the Menarpoor Restaurant; Caesar DuRag; Melton Feldown of the Newbourne Employment Agency; Dr. Hernal); the quirky details (the Menarpoor Restaurant serves Italian-Bengali fusion cuisine, such as mozzarella samosas and lasagna biriyani; Dr. Hernal is a podiatrist who administers the rooftop Observatory of the Human Limp; Caesar DuRag is the middleman for a business involving coat fetishists (who, under Rule 34, probably really act this way) with a crippling addiction to canned salted peanuts); the New York that is not quite New York but could not be anywhere other than the New York it isn't quite; the profound prosaic squareness of the whole thing that, somehow, ironically or otherwise, becomes poetically cool. Huey Lewis could have written "It's Hip to Be Square" about Julius Knipl, and frankly, the song would have been better if he had.
The presentation was with the band and singers on stage and pictures, with occasional rundimentary animation, by Katchor as the visual element. Mark Mulcahy's music is a typical specimen of the They Might Be Giants-crossed-with-Bang on a Can genre - the Bang on a Can composers (Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe) co-composed The Carbon Copy Building, so this is no surprise - and its charms complemented the charms of Katchor's artwork nicely.
So I liked it a lot, as you can see from the fact that I remembered all this to tell you. I don't know if it will ever play again in New York, but if it does, and my description appeals to you, go see it.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=87.3)
agrumer and I went to the New School to see a new musical theater piece by the great Ben Katchor. It was part of the New School's first annual Arts Festival, whose theme is Noir. I enjoyed Katchor's first musical theater piece, The Carbon Copy Building, so I couldn't wait to see what he's done now.This new piece is called A Checkroom Romance, and it revolves around the shadowy, mysterious world of coat checkrooms and the people who love them. The main character decides to build a coat checkroom in his apartment, and as you can probably guess from the fact that it's part of a festival devoted to Noir, things don't end well. (Among other things, he repurposes his only child's bedroom for the checkroom and she has to sleep in a sofabed in the living room. She's about ten. Katchor's graphics for this scene clearly allude to the old Castro Convertibles commercial (check out Uncle Miltie making fun of the commercial, which goes back to 1948! I had no idea).
I have been a fan of Katchor since my first exposure to Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, and I'm happy to say that the Katchor hallmarks are present: the Dickensian character names (Lena Basilica, the coat check attendant at the Menarpoor Restaurant; Caesar DuRag; Melton Feldown of the Newbourne Employment Agency; Dr. Hernal); the quirky details (the Menarpoor Restaurant serves Italian-Bengali fusion cuisine, such as mozzarella samosas and lasagna biriyani; Dr. Hernal is a podiatrist who administers the rooftop Observatory of the Human Limp; Caesar DuRag is the middleman for a business involving coat fetishists (who, under Rule 34, probably really act this way) with a crippling addiction to canned salted peanuts); the New York that is not quite New York but could not be anywhere other than the New York it isn't quite; the profound prosaic squareness of the whole thing that, somehow, ironically or otherwise, becomes poetically cool. Huey Lewis could have written "It's Hip to Be Square" about Julius Knipl, and frankly, the song would have been better if he had.
The presentation was with the band and singers on stage and pictures, with occasional rundimentary animation, by Katchor as the visual element. Mark Mulcahy's music is a typical specimen of the They Might Be Giants-crossed-with-Bang on a Can genre - the Bang on a Can composers (Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe) co-composed The Carbon Copy Building, so this is no surprise - and its charms complemented the charms of Katchor's artwork nicely.
So I liked it a lot, as you can see from the fact that I remembered all this to tell you. I don't know if it will ever play again in New York, but if it does, and my description appeals to you, go see it.
