Reviewer Muriel A. Svarre is a Parisian writer who now makes her home in New York City.  In Paris, she had her own TV show, focusing on that city’s cultural events.

Metropolita(i)n is a satiric tale devoted to entertaining a cosmopolitan audience. Very far from the feathers and uproar of Chat Noir and Moulin Rouge—you will find no shiny corsets, no velvet curtains, no libertinage. Just talented mockery and maybe, if you sit close enough, a pearl bow and the curve of a breast.

This musical revue goes back to the original genre of a true stinging satire: irony and poetry, ridicule and exaggeration to expose our cultures' prevalent character traits and failings. Voici Les Lettres Persanne, all over again [an eighteenth-century satire about two Persians traveling in France], with Ken Bloom, Barry Kleinbort and Christophe Mirambeau collaborating in the role of Montesquieu [author of the Lettres]. Edwin Cahill, Caroline de Fauw, Simon Fortin, Vincent Héden, Liza Michael and Caroline Roёlands, the multi-metamorphous heroes taking us on a staccato ride—tra(i)nspotting style—along the French and New York subways, trying to highlight our on and off stage differences and similarities.

The derision here preys on overused clichés and stereotypes, turning at times the parody into pure burlesque with déja vu accents. Oui, the French have a long tradition, which started with the barricades of 1848, of taking it to the streets in strikes and riots; and yes, your plane may be grounded after a week in the City of Lights. Oui, the French enjoy public displays of affection and feel shameless in revealing a Sapphic experience, and will argue that extremist Puritanism is actually conducive to many worse excesses. Oui, the French are renowned for having 246 regional cheese specialties, some of which may offend the American nose. Did you know they also have more than 600 regional specialties of  “confiséries” [sweets] that smell marvelous?

The French are, in fact, more versed in aesthetics than pragmatism.  The “flaneur” [lingerer who observes life from a seat in a cafe] versus the doer. The “escargot”—au garlic—versus La Fontaine’s “lievre” [in a popular French fable, the persistent tortoise/snail outruns the hare].  On the other side of the looking glass, I discovered familiar feelings. After living in New York for a decade, my Parisian bred and raised mind would never think of Home Depot as the most representative of American symbols, and I found it quite reductive to espouse the currently popular notion that Wall Street single-handedly brought the country to its knees, conveniently ignoring overleveraged home owners and political complicity in the mortgage mess.  This could have been just another cliché but it seemed to serve a political rather than a satiric purpose and intruded on the spirit of the revue.

However, was it the enthusiastic music, the perfect voices (except one) or the witty play on words?   Or perhaps my wine?  Somewhere in between the allusions to Montmartre and Grand Central Station, the outmoded clichés seemed revived by subtlety of style and the raw talent of the performers. The poetry here is real, as one instant I find myself sharing an absinthe at the corner café with Verlaine [a French poet who was part of a group of writers considered decadent] and the next, I am walking in Manhattan with that typical sensation I know only so well of a thousand smells along the avenues, a cacophony for the senses of millions of people stomping the floor in unison, clouds of smoke exuding out of the asphalt, always forcing me to walk faster and further. New York as I know it—constantly in motion, agitated, awake and hungry. Alive, underground at the Laurie Beechman Theatre.

They managed to capture the intensity of both the “Rêve de Paris” and the American Dream, morphing the two ideas into a harmonious whole despite the paradoxes.  To perfectly grasp the humor of Metropolita(i)n and its series of sketches, one has to comprehend the turbulent and complex tradition of the Franco-American relationship. The United States has always been a model society of abundance, political democracy and economic prosperity, cultural influence and imperial power. They saved us. They fascinate us. We love them to the point of hatred, like a jealous lover. We admire and despise the American way of life. Their charisma is beyond our control. Our charm is beyond theirs.

The show succeeds in reenacting these feelings with all the levity of a perfect evening on the town.  God Bless America and Vive la France, all in one at Metropolita(i)n!  Allez-y!

[Metropolita(i)n’s English music and lyrics were by Barry Kleinbort; French music and lyrics by Christophe Mirambeau; sketches by Ken Bloom. Produced by David Conte and directed by Kleinbort, Mirambeau and Bloom.  Paul Greenwood was musical director and pianist, Tom Hubbard on bass.]

(Photo by Stephen Sorokoff)

Muriel A. Svarre
Cabaret Scenes
November 19, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org