I imagine that Byrne would enjoy even more interactivity and people connections in his American Utopia. And for those skeptical that the band could provide such precise playing with rambunctious choreography, Byrne begins the Talking Heads “Born Under Punches” by having individual band members play their parts one by one, a quick lesson in the complexity that they make look so easy - and the immense amount of work keyboardist Karl Mansfield was tasked with due to the lack of any horns. It’s as if Bryne wanted to admit: You may love your neighbor, but you also want them to leave you alone. While explaining how a school choir he’d worked with had interpreted the newer “Everybody’s Coming to My House” (co-written with Brian Eno) as an inclusive good-time ditty, he performed the anxious track laced with glee. While Byrne can seem diffident when trying to reach the audience through soliloquy, it also lends the production a certain charm and authenticity rather than having the hour-and-45-minute show coming across as too-highly choreographed. Although his explanation as to how he asked Janelle Monáe’s permission to include her powerful “Hell You Talmbout” protest song - “If it was OK for a white man of a certain age to perform it” - was engrossing, as he explained it was a “requiem for people who were taken” and a song for humanity, urging the crowd to sing-a-long the names of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Emmitt Till and others. His line, “We’re all immigrants,” when describing himself and members of the band, received a rousing cheer, but it also felt like an easy win for the liberal, middle-aged crowd in attendance. All worthy sentiments, but somehow they feel like timid speed-bumps working against the jubilant music-making. At times, he tries to show connections between disparate parts of the audience, or compels people to register to vote and have optimism in our democracy. Byrne’s interstitial banter can feel awkward and heavy-handed. They look like they could be a snazzy cult lost in some other dimension dedicated to minimalism and mechanical movements - all set to a tribal-pop beat. Everyone is dressed the same in light gray suits, gray button-down shirts everyone is barefoot. They then segue into the rollicking “Lazy,” layered with heavy drums and a dance beat that makes it impossible not to bounce along, as they are joined by more members of the band. It looks like it could be the set up for a Spalding Gray one-man show, but he begins singing “Here,” from his 2018 album American Utopia : “… Here is a region that continues living / Even when the other sections are removed… Raise your eyes to one who loves you / It is safe right where you are…” He’s soon joined by two singer/dancers in matching gray suits - one red-headed white man (Chris Giarmo), one black woman with long braids (Tendayi Kuumba), both with shiny eye shadow - who accompany their prophet. The production opens with a curtain of elegant thin-metal chains slowly rising as Byrne, a spectral figure with white hair lit from above, sits in a chair at a card table, holding a model of a brain. Combining a back catalog of 20 songs from both Talking Heads and his solo albums along with bits of storytelling and humble advice, it’s Byrne’s secular church offering a tonic for our tumultuous times - six times a week. Earlier this year, he launched his online magazine, Reasons to Be Cheerful, and in many ways American Utopia, his concert-theater-dance installation that’s opened on Broadway (through January 19th), could be seen as art rock group therapy. Rather than wearing an ironic mantle of aloofness, Byrne - who led Talking Heads through the 1970s and Eighties, and has followed his own joyously eclectic path as a solo artist since then - has in recent years made it his mission to try to help people find happiness. Fans of David Byrne are used to his ability of pinpointing life’s dumb incongruities and elevating them to something that could be either joyfully menacing or pleasurably disorienting.
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