Jacques Brel - The Rage to Live

Published Wednesday 2 January 2008 at 11:30 by Mark Shenton

Just as the revue Side by Side by Sondheim introduced the name of Stephen Sondheim into a wider theatrical currency, it was Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, first seen off-Broadway in 1966, that did the same thing for the Belgian troubadour. It was through the cast album of that show, in Mort Shuman’s English versions of the songs, that I first discovered Brel myself.

But while the material, of course, cannot fail to suggest the pain and passion of the man, the work was largely left to sing for itself. A poster of the earlier revue now looks down on a new show director Judith Paris and performer Anthony Cable have put together that seeks to examine the complex man behind it - and gives Brel a chance to rebuke that show’s legacy, too, once and for all. “It was like oil and water - it wasn’t me”, he says, though he admits that the royalties were useful.

Cable’s approach to the songs - as well as the man - is duly informed by this kind of dark bitterness, rage and anger. It may, inevitably, be a little bleak and unyielding - there’s not much light beside the shade of the clouds he constantly seems to inhabit. But Cable brings a powerful intensity to it that reveals the songs in a new, poignantly personal light.