Take in a joyous cabaret about death, decay
After the opening night of “We’re Gonna Die,” Young Jean Lee’s joyous show featuring a musician singing and talking about death, a friend (and Texan) told me that, in the South, people aren’t supposed to acknowledge the dark realities of life. She said the most popular mantra in this part of the country is “smile and denial.”
The phrase makes the existence of “We’re Gonna Die” a lot of sense. “We’re Gonna Die” exists to give “smile and denial” the finger, while doing so with smiles and ukulele. Directed by Jacey Little and produced by Horsehead Theatre Co., the show is visiting Houston bars and clubs through Sept. 1. It stars Alli Villines, who performs as a combination of herself — the local ukulele performer, actor and member of the Christina Wells Band — and the fictional one given to her by Lee, a relatable American woman reflecting on her life experiences.
During last Friday’s opening night, at the Secret Group in EaDo, Villines’ casual strumming pierced the preshow chatter without interrupting it. The ukulele was still treated like the garden gnome of acoustic string instruments — decorative, cute, silly. It’s the easiest instrument to underestimate. Guitars weep; ukes chirp. How could they ever be serious? If you didn’t know Lee’s pieces often are a form of radical social experiment, you’d believe this was yet-another singer-songwriter performing for a crowd of polite, half-boozed onlookers.
But what starts off as an acoustic concert featuring Villines, bassist Alan Simmons and percussionist Gitiim Chakamoi turns quickly into a meditation on the fact that, even in our mundane lives, we are surrounded by death, decay, chaos and self-hatred. Mind you, this is a fun show about death, decay, chaos and self-hatred. As Villines pauses to speak between songs, you realize that these interludes
are the show — the libretto to a tragic opera about everyday life. Villines says “these stories are true, not all of them happened to me,” then tells wrenching stories about childhood, hopelessness and loss.
Think of it as a combination of a Moth Radio Hour show, a David Sedaris short story and a one-woman cabaret. In other words, Villines tells us a few stories about horrible things that happened to her character. But by acknowledging the worst parts of life, she gives the audience permission to have horrible things happen to them. It uses the socially inappropriate personal anecdote as an agent of inspiration and hope. Offering a tonic to the shame and guilt we feel daily, Villines’ anecdotes erase, if only temporarily, the oppressive control of “smile and denial.”
The song “Horrible Things,” written from one damaged soul to another, sounds like a happygo-lucky, upbeat tune, but its words tell us that tragedy strikes everyone. Here, Lee knows both where in the show we are — we’ve just heard about an ugly, unjust death of a loved one — and the kind of the emotional redemption we want. Instead, she creates a moment of spiritual uplift for people who hate religion, pop songs and Disney movies.
The song doesn’t say “get over it” or “it’ll get better.” It simply says, yes, ugly things happen for no reason to innocent people all the time. Welcome to the world. It’s a screwed-up place, and we all live in it. Nobody wins. We’re all gonna die. OK then. Now let’s play some music.