Jacques Brel is one of the most famous French singers of all time. His songs, by turns passionate, disgusted and cynical, are famous for their musings on love. With this in mind, Peter Straker’s decision to bring his own version of Brel to the Fringe has some pretty high expectations to fulfil. Straker acknowledges this, admitting to his audience ‘I am not Jacques, I am only imagining that I were him for an hour’. The result is mixed. While Straker often hits the notes of Brel’s songs with aplomb, the filler in-between feels humdrum and forced.
The performance opens with a recorded interview of Brel, where he explains his view that talent is desire to do something, rather than innate genius. Straker, however, uses this material choppily. A further videoclip where Brel asserts (in subtitled French) that idleness is stupidity is simply followed by Straker repeating the words back to us. It felt pointless. The aim is to provide a framework to Brel’s life but little scenes about his love for drink felt unnecessary, self-indulgent, and provided nothing interesting.
However, the main question is whether Straker’s rendition of Brel’s songs achieves the water-mark and, by and large, they do. Straker has a fine vocal range and is able to move from the despair of ‘Amsterdam’ to the jaded observation of ‘Madame’ riding to check out the local wildlife. Straker is superbly assisted by his backing musicians, in particular the guitarist and arranger Mike Allison. They all look as though they’re having tremendous fun. The song lyrics are in English and while Brel’s intensity mostly comes across with the translation, I question the need for it. While Straker firmly assures us that his version of Brel is only his interpretation, Brel’s songs have a punch in the original that no translation can match. It only adds to the disconnect.
Straker can still make the hair on the back of your neck stnad on end, in particular during a beautiful version of ‘When All We Have Is Love’, possibly Brel’s most famous song. To pull this off is no mean feat. However, the hour as a whole feels a bit confused and would benefit from more songs or more about Brel himself, instead of a skeletal biography. Fans of Brel should definitely have a look, but as an oddity rather than a definitive statement.
