Elizabeth

Elizabeth is a first-person account of being a cocktail bar pianist, the musician – maybe a very talented musician – tinkling away in the corner in some venue or other where the main business is drinking, chatting and hooking up.  Live performance muzak.  Rarely listened to with any attention, often ignored completely, interrupted, regarded as interruption, the pianist asked to ‘tone it down’ or ‘play softer’, or harassed by sexist put-downs and well-worn pick-up lines, cut off any time by recorded ‘house music’ – and underpaid with no perks.   It’s a sad story, here interspersed with songs with clever but sad lyrics.

‘Sad’ is the major problem.  The show depends on pathos.  It is, in the end, an hour of ‘poor me’.  It’s on one note and becomes maudlin even though the songs are inventive, musically and in their forms and rhymes.  But the songs are all ‘ironic’ and low key – or it certainly feels that way.  I was reminded of Blossom Dearie a few times, but there are no funny, satiric songs like her famous ‘I’m Hip’ here.

There’s no doubt Lisa Crawley, an attractive performer, is a skilled musician with her two keyboards and, for one number, a guitar (why only one number?) an array of buttons and foot pedals that enable her to record a phrase and play it over and over, or add a beat or change tempo.  At some point, however, the skill becomes more interesting than the show’s content. 

The spoken script has moments of sharp observation, mainly of annoying bar patrons and these get a laugh (they’d get more with better timing), but they’re just dropped in and don’t connect or develop.  There is a central story, that of Elizabeth the pianist and a guy called Luke.  He tries a clumsy but different pick-up routine and somehow that’s sweet and a relationship begins.  It’s momentarily touching.  But Luke gets a carcinoma – and his sister hates Elizabeth (why?) – and Luke – I think – dies.  It’s sad.  But the whole show is sad and this is the clincher – true or not.  Ms Crawley and her co-writer, Rochelle Bright, needs some advice on the script and the songs, and director Kitan Petkovski needs to be tougher on timing and on adding some light and shade.

Michael Brindley

Photos by: Ben Mastwyk