Trailer:THE BLUE FLOWER
It just about broke my heart. THE BLUE FLOWER is a gorgeous kaleidoscope of sight and sound. It’s the A.R.T.’s latest, a multimedia musical play with video, movement, song and dance, live band and a killer cast of seven juggling a new “language,” and many achingly beautiful songs.
THE BLUE FLOWER is at once familiar and strange, funny and shattering. Creators Jim and Ruth Bauer have given us a narrative which flashes back through the memory of one man Max (Daniel Jenkins). From Belle Epoque Paris, through WWI, Weimar Germany, WWII, and its fall out.. three artists and a scientist (inspired by historical figures) struggle to make art, make love, and survive as the world falls apart around them. The score-described as Country Western by way of Kurt Weill- is deeply evocative and melodic, lyrical, angry, and bittersweet. This ardent cast delivered the goods: the four leads are a perfect ensemble, their voices seeped into my bones, as these war-wounded souls sang songs of pain and loss, and the haunting refrain that “things will never, will never be the same.”
It’s a long evening, and not for everybody– but it was for me; I was deeply reminded that perfection is elusive and we must make our peace with that.
I left with tears running down my cheeks.
See it at The American Repertory Theater in Cambridge through January 8.