Spend an electrifying ‘Night With Janis Joplin’
Kacee Clanton belts out singer’s life of yearning
Janis Joplin may never die.
The hard-living chanteuse has been reincarnated on stage in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love.
A psychedelic flashback to the glory days of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture explosion, “A Night with Janis Joplin” is as electrifying as ever in its San Francisco premiere at American Conservatory Theater.
Capping off a rigorous ACT season that included the highly cerebral visions of Peter Brook and Robert Lepage, this hell-bent rock musical gives you a chance to cut the intellect lose and plunge yourself into the primal ecstasy of sound.
The formidable Kacee Clanton, who also starred in the show’s San Jose run in 2013, claims more than one piece of your heart this time around. The actress/ singer has had time to steep in the whiskey-soaked mysteries of Joplin, the doomed queen of rock ‘n’ roll.
In Randy Johnson’s concert-style revue, Joplin taps into her passion and her pain. Long red locks swirling to and fro, sweat dripping from her face, this Janis howls her way through classics such as “Tell Mama,” “Down on Me,” “Cry Baby,” “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” “Mercedes-Benz” and “Piece of my Heart.”
As ever, Clanton echoes the scratchy vocals that are the signature of the ‘60s diva. A wild child making love to the microphone, she screeches through “Ball and Chain” and coos into “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Clanton may not be a consummate actor and she struggles to give weight to the play’s somewhat repetitive insights into the blues. Janis has too much dialogue in the manner of “it’s the want of something that gives you the blues.” The confessional aspects of the show should cut a lot closer to the bone. But she can sing like a bat out of hell and she re-creates Joplin’s raspy pipes with uncanny authenticity.
Flanked by the trippy pulsations of lava lamp-inspired projections and accompanied by a smoking hot onstage band, Janis lets it all hang out, man. She shares the secrets of her muses, the iconic singers of her youth, from Bessie and Nina to Aretha (all channeled by backup singers so badass they deserve their own show).
Ashley Tamar Davis gilds “Summertime” with honeyed tones and Sharon Catherine Brown wraps the audience around her finger in “Today I Sing the Blues.” These charismatic performers might almost upstage Joplin if Clanton weren’t so adept at distilling a lifetime’s worth of nakedness and yearning into every lyric.
While the weakest points in this production remain the dialogue, the musical interludes are mind-blowing enough to conjure up a euphoria that’s a welcome reprieve from a weary world.
Along the way Janis embarks on her courtship with destruction, swigging from a bottle of Southern Comfort in between songs, leaving sobriety behind forever.
The rock legend famously died at the age of 27 of a heroin overdose, but in our age of soulless autotuned popstars, her incandescent vocals seem eternal.