A Night With Janis Joplin

There are two shows at war with each other in the Broadway tribute musical about the life and music of legendary rock-and-blues singer Janis Joplin.

It's probably not surprising that "A Night With Janis Joplin" takes the upbeat road typical of such exhumations. This is a Janis who sips her Southern Comfort where the real Janis slugged down bottles while performing. She doesn't smoke one cigarette. Most troubling of all, there is no reference to drugs.

Since the audience, which, the night I attended, consisted almost entirely of aging Boomers (present company included), knows that Joplin's personal saga ended at age 27 of a heroin overdose, presenting Joplin's story with a happy ending ends up being more disconcerting than if the show's creators had simply adhered to reality.

In "Night," Joplin becomes a mischievous sprite, a knowing assimilator of her blues predecessors, and a model of female empowerment. The real Janis Joplin was a highly troubled artist whose fame and iconic status as the �ber hippie chick never overcame the deep-rooted insecurity of her adolescent years.

In this version, Joplin's upbringing in Port Arthur, Texas, comes across as a mostly happy time singing the Broadway show tunes dear to her mother as she and her two siblings share family chores, imbibing the records of early rock-and-roll girl groups and busily painting until a chance encounter with a promoter-manager led to a trip to San Francisco. In no time, Joplin becomes the front woman for a San Francisco jam band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, achieves fame and enjoys nothing so much as standing on a stage while singing her heart out.

In truth, Joplin was ostracized by her classmates as a weirdo, ridiculed for her chunky body and acne-scarred face, was misunderstood by her parents, and took to making paintings that her gave her instructors misgivings. In college, her nonconformity made her so unpopular the frat boys voted her "Ugliest Man on Campus."

For her, singing was more primal therapy than vocal technique, an outlet for her isolation, feelings of shame and ambivalence about the men who mostly put her down. (At least she got her biggest hit, "Me and Bobbie McGee" out of Kris Kristofferson.) Even when she became famous, she never outgrew her insecurity, which led to a series of disastrous love affairs and the multiple substance abuse that killed her.

The culprit, I suspect, is her family, especially her sister, Laura, who, ever since Joplin died has been busily scrubbing her life of the most bitter parts. It's a shame, because a fully rounded portrait would have been made for much better theater, not to mention being more true to her memory.

Most surprisingly, this Janis Joplin gives us a lot of incidental anecdotes but leaves out the most important good stuff that happened, in particular her appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. The subsequent film version of the concert, along with her performance at Woodstock, propelled Joplin into the universe of rock idols alongside late '60s superstars like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. (It's true: Only the good die young.)

What makes "Night" worth the sanitized script is the amazing performance of Mary Bridget Davies in the title role. Davies has perfected the hoarse, throaty, scratchy rendering that made Joplin such a startling presence, both onstage and on vinyl. I can't fault Davies for lacking the ineffable sadness that made Joplin's interpretation of classics like "Summertime" and "Ball and Chain" blues landmarks. It's more than enough that she manages to go from a whisper to a roar. That she somehow does this eight times a week made me almost queasy; by the second act, "Night" was beginning to feel as much like an endurance contest as a book musical.

In a show like this, the musical arrangements are crucial, and these are impeccable. The creators wisely chose to recreate Big Brother rather than the more manicured studio musicians who made up Joplin's later back-ups Kozmic Blues Band and Full-Tilt Boogie Band. Their long, stringy hair and scruffy appearance nicely recreates San Francisco's Summer of Love in all its glorious messiness.

To round out the show --�and give Davies a few much-needed breaks -- we get a succession of female blues artists from Bessie Smith to Aretha Franklin. The singer-actors impersonating these legends go from one to the other with ease. Each one is terrific, although it was Tarena Michelle Augustine's version of "Today I Sing the Blues" that really brought the house down.

On the other end of the spectrum, I don't know what demons possessed the show's creators to turn Aretha Franklin into one of the Weather Girls. Allison Blackwell does a more-than-creditable job of impersonating the world's greatest soul singer. But the over-the-top gyrations, Flip-Wilson/Geraldine wig and sassy stage banter are a gross caricature of Franklin's magisterial style. And why have her sing with Joplin when there was a real-life duet with Tina Turner, one of Joplin's idols, not in this show?

Pardon me if I'm also more than a bit skeptical that the Queen of Soul, Etta James, Odetta, Nina Simone and Bessie Smith would have given their imprimatur to Joplin's interpretation of the blues. Whether or not Joplin should be put in the same category as other (read: black) blues singers is an ongoing debate.

The truth is that Joplin was anything but a "pure" blues singer. Like Eric Clapton, John Mayall, the Rolling Stones and other "blue-eyed soul" artists who rediscovered Delta Blues in the '60s, she fused the blues with rock. They might not be pure enough for some blues aficionados, but they inspired a resurgent interest in an art form that otherwise would have been relegated to a few academics.

"A Night With Janis Joplin" ends with Joplin finally appearing in one of her signature outsized feather-bedecked hats. In sharp contrast to Joplin's a capella version, "Mercedes Benz" gets the full Broadway treatment, turning the acid social commentary into a fun way to leave 'em smiling.

Oh well. If you're looking for the real Janis, there are plenty of good biographies out there. I'd recommend Myra Friedman's "Buried Alive;" avoid Peggy Casserta's trashy fuck-and-tell "Going Down With Janis," about the author's affair (no reflection on Joplin's sexuality; in those days and in that scene, everybody was sleeping with anybody). The Broadway musical has never been known as a repository of truth telling.

It's all a bit silly, an over-the-top production that presents a Disneyfied tribute to an artist whose primeval moans still resonate as an ultimate musical outpouring of despair. Still, if you missed experiencing the real-life Janis Joplin or just miss her as much as I do, you could do a lot worse than Davies' full-throated recreation.