Music: Bopera on Broadway

A lantern-jawed singer with baby-doll bangs and a piano player with a floppy polka-dot bow tie opened and closed their mouths like goldfish sending up bubbles from the bottom of a murky aquarium. The sound of their voices was drowned out by the thumping and puffing of six poker-faced young men behind them, who played their instruments with loud, emotionless precision. In the darkness out front several hundred listeners crowded around small tables, stood three deep at the bar, or sat in straight-backed chairs in an upholstered bull pen. On the mirror in the far corner of the Royal Roost, foot-high...

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