The Sun Break calls
K. Brian Neel's performance "The only tragicomic one-man ukulele operetta worth seeing."
"The show tells the story of Cecil B. DeUkulele, a washed-up vaudeville performer whose shtick is the uke. From the beginning of his career upstaging a comic actress through his rise to the top vaudeville circuit to his eventual fall via a love-affair with a accordion-playing midget in an abusive relationship with a Russian strongman, Vaud Rats is both a charmingly executed story and an homage to the tradition of vaudeville."
At Seattle's
Balagan Theatre, through January 16.
Link
3 comments:
A gratuitous slap in the face to all the other tragicomic one-man ukulele operettas out there. My favorite is A (Tiki) Flea In Her Ear, which starts out making you laugh, then makes you cry, and finally at the very end has you doing both at the same time. Genius!
Ron, I thought the same thing. Attention tragicomic one-man ukulele operetta composers. The gauntlet has been thrown.
Am I the only Bay Area uker not familiar with Vagabondage (the band)? An SFGate local band blog the other day wrote them up as San Francisco's greatest acoustic duo. Well, alright, I suppose, all well and good. Nothing in the writing mentioned ukulele, but a video was included. So, I watched it, and it was ukulele and accordion (and bass), but the video isn't tagged "ukulele" so searching on the word isn't going to bring it up.
Now, I can't vouch for them as SF's greatest acoustic duo, but I can
say that the video instantly became my favorite 2009 ukulele video - a very catchy drinking song featuring the Bay Area's finest drinkers and roustabouts, and for that extra touch in drinker and roustabout authenticity, shot in Oakland.
Vagabondage deserves to be well-known in the ukulele world
(I can't recall ever reading anything about them). I plan to put the video into Ukulele Hunt's 2009 video-of-the-year competition to raise their profile (and show that the Bay Area takes a backseat to nobody when it comes to ukulele talent, and that we support our own).
Indulgences are begged for my going off-topic and mentioning them (although the song could fit quite easily into a ukulele/accordion (and bass) operetta).
The video:
Vagabondage - Raise Your Glass
from: vagabondageband
This is the official music video of the song, uploaded Sept. 22, 2009.
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