Clemons sings with conviction in ‘View From Here’
It’s immediately clear that there’s nothing simple or easy about what we’ll see in Timothy Huang’s “The View from Here,” a 70-minute, one-man song cycle featuring Doug Clemons that’s now being staged by Umbrella Group Theatre under Kelly Doherty’s direction (musical direction by Paula Foley Tillen).
As Clemons’ never-named novelist opens the door onto a sixth-floor New York walk-up in the first song, he looks defeated. He’s loaded down with the baggage he’s brought with him; as soon becomes apparent, it’s an apt symbol of a past that’s weighing down his efforts to move forward, toward a future in which he envisions his still unsold first novel paving the way.
Hence even as Tillen’s piano moves into an upbeat tempo while the novelist describes what he likes about his window view, what lingers in the mind are the halting and plaintive notes with which the song began — and the anguished look on Clemons’ face before he resolutely rearranged its contours into an enthusiastic smile. What gives? Why does this man wearing a wedding ring live alone? Who is the never-seen Kelly, to whom so many of this cycle’s songs are written? And why is the novelist writing them in easily erasable pencil, on scraps of paper and even garbage that he then pins to the wall rather than sending them on to their ostensible recipient?
I can’t fairly disclose the answers, which arrive in overly delayed and tacked-on reveals — accompanied by an embarrassingly clunky plot twist and mawkish sentimentality, in a piece that already tilts toward the fraught and melodramatic. Throw in some of Huang’s painfully awkward rhymes and one begins to understand why this decade-old piece is so rarely staged.
The very significant plus side is all about Clemons, fresh from his triumphant performance two months ago in Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s “The Story of My Life.”
Even the gifted Clemons is occasionally taxed by the upper reaches of Huang’s demanding score, which is all over the place, requiring extraordinary vocal gymnastics while channeling everything from the Great American Songbook and Broadway to Tom Lehrer and smooth jazz. It’s not musically complex, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to sing.
Exhibiting impeccable control, beautifully expressive modulation, occasional operatic flourishes and dashes of humor (abetted by an intermittent and playful call and response with Bill Seaman’s trumpet), Clemons sings with such commitment and conviction that one comes to root for and even believe in the novelist — at least until his story gets hijacked toward the end.
Thematically, the best songs along the way are those taking the novelist out of his solipsistic self while taking down New York. But the major takeaway involves Clemons himself, who represents the best reason to see this show.