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Sunday 16 December 2018

REVIEW: SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY

4/5

The Boss Of Broadway.

Trust me. The same guy who two years back spent the best part of an evening from 7pm in an online queue to book a ticket to get in another queue to line-up outside Waterstones in London to meet Bruce Springsteen and get a signed copy of his autobiography 'Born To Run'. Unable to move from my position or page no matter who called. Only to realize that the tickets went two minutes after seven and were already making the rounds on eBay (these things were free...no wonder they call you guys "scalpers") for hundreds and thousands, but no ice cream. And that I should have online sleeping bag got in the queue hours before not actually at seven (Homer Simpson). The same guy who a year before was in yet another queue underneath the Top Of The Rock in New York City for a chance to get tickets to see him on The Jimmy Fallon show for a Late Night with NBC in NYC. Only for the man in charge to count heads all the way to me and then put his arm out in front of my chest like the law of sods and declare, "no more tickets". Only for me to then wait on standby with a group of people talking to some guy and his girl for the best part of a fruitless hour, only for a woman to whisper politely in the squealing (to be fair I would too) girls ear, "I have one spare if you'd like". Really?! I mean should I take her guy for a slice? What are we supposed to do? Only (oh it gets better) to then, pizza in hand walk back to my hotel across from Madison Square Garden (shout-out to the John Hughes aesthetic of the perfect Hotel Pennsylvania) and see that Times Square was cornered off with construction tape, thinking, "sod this for a day in New York! I'll take a detour" (probably ironically via the road of the Walter Kerr Theatre). Only to get back to my 'Home Alone' decor room to switch on the news and see that U2 played a surprise, free gig featuring no other but who? Yep...Bruce Springsteen. So it would come as no surprise that this same Englishman would go all the way to New York to see 'Springsteen On Broadway' and without thinking (I seem to do a lot of that) pick the one time the Boss was taking a week off. But save your chortles. It wouldn't have mattered. As attempting to fly back for a night in N.Y. whilst chasing the King in L.A., the cheapest tickets after the lottery you know I would have lost to that girl were going for seven and a half thousand American (scalpers!). Seven and a half grand?! What is Bruce going to walk me to my seat?! Trust me to try the one week I wasn't remortgaging the house I don't even own. I can't complain though. Thanks to a lovely lady I got to see Springsteen tour the whole stream of 'The River' and even perform 'Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town' (Merry Christmas to you and yours) in the height of a rainy British Summer two years ago. Not to mention I had my own New York Bruce moment almost a decade gone when me and my boy broke the bank to watch Springsteen play with Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld and Tony Bennett people. Actually on Broadway. A night that raised money for wounded soldiers. So those damn scalpers didn't get all our dollars. A vindication after my first Boss experience in London's Hyde Park was ruined by some guy who was singing along (ain't nothing wrong with that but I'm taking like the tonest of tone death pub singing) and doing the guitar bits (yep) on the loudest volume, right down my ear that he may as well have been kissing the lobe (so...what you doing later?! Fancy a pizza?). So I've had my perfect Springsteen in New York moment for a night we shouldn't have even been at. And when way back then Bruce auctioned his signed acoustic guitar off to the rich and famous elite in the crowd who was in the bleachers shouting 20 dollars? Trust me.

We all have our Springsteen story (you only have to ask an Uber driver trust me. It's beautiful) and that's my boring several. But no stories are greater than the ones the best Boss you've ever had (sorry Ryan) tells. And this is what 'Springsteen On Broadway' is all about. Don't worry Bruce isn't getting his acting on. He too as real as it gets for all that play pretend. Even though his cameo in 'High Fidelity' is award worthy. At this point the Oscars would and should probably do a category for all that. But you know the man whose already won one for the 'Streets Of Philadelphia' and fought for one with 'The Wrestler' is going to get a Tony like Danza in the dark for this. And now all of you with even worse luck than me can join me in buying the soundtrack and watching it on Netflix whilst I cry into my ice cream like Bridget Jones. Now who's the one singing along badly? But what else are you going to do alone this winter apart from wrap up in your warmest and snuggle up on the sofa with a duvet ("Ross we're 33. We're not women") when baby it's cold outside and it all gets Netflix and chilly? Hey it's not just writer that's got jokes. And trust me Bruce's are better thankfully. As the American songbook legend proves he's more than a songwriter and all singing storyteller as he stops between tunes and tunes up to crack a few punchlines to his prose. Like back a decade ago on that night with Tony, when the Tony award go getter described this high experience of love he had with a young lady in a park in his youth that felt akin to a fever dream. His stage fright performance with the wrong kind of substance, shall me say not as punctuated as this. "Ah baby. I'm so out of it I have no idea what I'm doing right now" the Boss confesses. To which his muse muses in replying, "I know! (like Monica's Courtney Cox from his iconic 'Dancing' video) you've been eating grass for the last half hour"! There's more gags of this reflective reflex here (even if everytime he mentions the man downstairs he also beats his right side of his chest to put emphasis on where love and making it really come from), which we won't spoil like your dinner if we get anymore down and dirty. Because this stage show and soundtrack accompaniment is something to be seen and heard for the first time like I only wish (*sniff*) I could have live in New York like Saturday night. But now we're all off Broadway on this theatrical (born to) run we can see why one man and a guitar sold out every night in the busiest, most famous city in the world for a full year (minus the week I went) and grossed over a billion dollars (Dr. Evil finger to the lips).

But this nuanced narrative is no joke as the worn blue jeans symbol of the boot-cut worked for American dream mines the depths of depression and secrets of family for a weary heart still hungry in the famine for substance today. This may not be the one, two, three, FOUR Springsteen stadium shouting ask of, "is anybody really alive out there". Although like his arena wrecking ball assaults he punches the clock in almost three hours of runtime. But this utterly intimate theatrical setting of a guitar, stool and workman's set is the closest thing you'll get to Bruce and the rock God he is save jumping over the fence of his ranch like this young man did to the King Elvis Presley, as he stormed the gates of Graceland like the Las Vegas Killers inspired by his heartland music in honoured homage. The portrait he paints with just six strings is poetry, pure and unflinching like the road he's lead in this life off E Street. This is a real Jersey boy staged on Broadway. Forget 'Big Boy's Don't Cry'. They raw reveal every evoking emotion. And the Boss himself talks about how he invented all that 'Jersey Shore' s### too as he gets lude, rude, crude and f###### funny. On a candid affair lifted from the pages of his inspired memoir 'Born To Run' as this theatrical runs showstopping Playbill. One that makes his previous classic VH1 Storytellers segment look like a pamphlet in spine to spine comparison. The rock legend rolls out all his legacy making classics. Like the aforementioned 'Born' or 'Dancing In The Dark'. The 'Tougher Than The Test'/'Brilliant Disguise', 'Tunnel Of Love' duo duet with perfect partner Patti (please let's reunite Julliard classmates and classic 'A Most Violent Year' co-stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, the best actor and actress in the game today to play these two). Songs for his mum and dad with soul jerking and bone deep devotion. 'Thunder Road' for Clarence with an inspired interlude that haunts like the Big Man's sax ringing through a Freehold night. 'The Ghost Of Tom Joad' and all the spirits of the lessons of yesterday past that still try to 'Christmas Carol' warn us of the war coming and all we should pay heed to today for a better tomorrow. And of course the original, acoustic realization of what the patriotic 'Born In The U.S.A.' is really all about and what all that means to the wider world from our own picket fences, front lawns. Yes in this Trumped up age of unsocial media and an even less connected sense of humanity right now we need the Boss like the man who shouted that out his car when he drove past Bruce a few weeks after 9/11 (that lead Springsteen to come out of his almost decade drought and come back for the city on his back from the ashes with 'The Rising' (also brought back here) and the rest is second wind, real icon making symbolism and history) to put us to rights. But this night is more personal than political, like it is close quarter vigil, intimate than stadium arcadium. Less wave your cell phones in the air like you just don't care about anyone else's view (thankfully). More that reaching, if you will, human touch. As naked emotionally as the register his high notes really sing and hit on the out of 'Limbo' soundtrack 'Lift Me Up' (an underrated gem in his underrated for its versatility songbook). This is really about Bruce and us. As we travel together on this adventure like companions or roadside warriors as the song this writer wrote in devotion to his hero outside his family, 'Another Round For Me And The Boy From New Jersey'. Sure the songs are what has made him. Even if a refreshingly more relaxed and even swearing like a sailor, Bruce calls B.S. on his songs about working and driving. Since he never held a driving license back then and hasn't held down a Dolly Parton 9 'till 5, Monday 'till Friday 'till now. But it's all the talk between that makes this and makes the scoured the earth, sought after 'Springsteen On Broadway' so much more than just another live show and gig on his ever extended E Street run of a road trip. All of his heart and soul, personally personified on one backstreet stage just left of Times Square, but in his and our shared reality a million miles away from all that earth, electrical entertainment core neon glow. This is the big draw to the core of the Big Apple until the ball drops like Dick Clark on the last day of the calender. This is just the ticket. If only we could have got one. Well...now in your own home you have a front row seat. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

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