Dylan Skulks From Record to Screen to Stage

Hearing Bob Dylan’s words come out of another’s mouth isn’t what makes “The Times They Are A-Changin’, ” Twyla Tharp’s new production based on Mr. Dylan’s work, so strange. Singers such as Joan Baez, the Byrds, and Peter, Paul & Mary were performing Mr. Dylan’s songs long before anyone outside the tight-knit Greenwich Village folk scene ever heard of him. And long after. What makes the play stand apart is its sheer ridiculousness.Unlike the Billy Joel songs featured in Ms. Tharp’s last production, “Movin’ Out” (“Uptown Girl” and “River of Dreams” leap to mind), Mr. Dylan’s work doesn’t lend itself to elaborate set pieces and aggressive Broadway vibrato. Yet, here it is, presented with campy costumes, synchronized dance steps, and decades of voice coaching.Whatever offense Mr. Dylan fans might feel inclined to take at the spectacle is moderated, somewhat, by the fact that it was Mr. Dylan who approached Ms. Tharp to stage it. It’s part of his recent — and increasingly crass — campaign to keep himself in the public eye (not that the public has been threatening to look away).First, there was the creepy Victoria’s Secret TV commercial. Then the stylish, high-contrast iPod one. Now this. One would like to imagine Mr. Dylan sitting in the back of the theater, cackling at the absurdity of his elaborate joke, but that would be giving him too much credit.The show doesn’t go out of its way to lampoon Mr. Dylan’s music. In fact, the band, situated in a kind of junkyard nest in the upper right corner of the stage, is respectful and quite good. They mostly stick to Mr. Dylan’s original arrangements. It’s the use of the songs in service of a narrative that rankles and breaks down.Some songs inevitably shoehorn into the storyline more easily than others. “Gotta Serve Somebody,” the standout track from Mr. Dylan’s late 1970s fascination with Christianity, works well enough to demonstrate one character’s violent dominion. “Highway 61 Revisted,” about the fickle, irrational demands of a father on his son (originally God and Abraham), also lends itself to the story. And one can’t quibble with the use of a ragtime-y “Maggie’s Farm” as the soundtrack to a circus workers revolt: “No I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more,” the chorus sings in unison.But too often Mr. Dylan’s rich tales are stripped down to mere moods — even moods at odds with the intentions of the songs themselves. “Like a Rolling Stone,” one of Mr. Dylan’s most devastating songs, and his most popular, is performed with a sparkly red, white, and blue guitar and a phalanx of clowns performing tricks. “Never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all came down to do tricks for you,” one character sings, smiling at the clowns as they roll around on rubber balls. It’s as though he has no idea that the song is actually about a wealthy woman’s fall into destitution (and probably prostitution).Ms. Tharp and company do better simply interpreting the content of the songs. “Desolation Row” and “Rainy Day Women,” with their topsy-turvy dreamscape imagery, probably inspired the whole circus conceit in the first place. They make for an entertaining, orgiastic medley. And “Mr. Tambourine Man,” with it’s dance imagery (“to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free / silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands …”, becomes a lovely shadow-dance set piece.But the most affecting moments are the least theatrical. Thom Sesma (Ahrab), with his gravelly delivery and weak (by Broadway standards) voice, sounds the most like Mr. Dylan, and does him the best justice. Illuminated by a single spotlight, he performed a touching version of “Not Dark Yet” that blended, seamlessly, into “Forever Young.”Hearing the lyrics, it was easy to forgive and forget: “May your heart always be joyful / may your song always be sung / may you stay, forever young.” One wishes the same for Mr. Dylan’s music.

Dylan Skulks From Record to Screen to Stage

Dylan Skulks From Record to Screen to Stage

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