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American Treadmill. Brel's idiom is barely translatable from Flemish to French, let alone from French to English. Blau and Shuman went an impossible step farther, translating English into American. Les Flamandes (The Flemish Women), for example, became Marathon, and metamorphosed from a Belgian character study into a portrayal of the American treadmill. Then came the hard part. Blau wanted the show staged with "everything floating, and the feeling that all was pressed against a tapestry of utter silence." Off-Broadway, utter silence is a phenomenon that usually occurs only after a show closes.
Elly Stone made it an ingredient of her debut. Oceans of eerie quiet still surround Brel's 16-bar novellas at every performance. The narrow, tremulous wraith appears in black velvet pants and jacket, a little lace jabot at her throat. The mordant chords purl from the back of the stage, and she becomes an authentically possessed figure. On the slow numbers, the words are not sung; they seem to float from her throat. The uptempo songs could survive almost any rendition, but when Elly sings them, she charges them with alternating currents of energy and melancholia. She does not interpret the songs, she becomes their owner—and their tenant. In Carousel, she sings in a lazy, wheeling style—until suddenly the merry-go-round lurches out of control. The carousel spins elliptically, dangerously, until the singer reaches an unbearable frenzy —and shatters. Audiences that witness such tours de force know what it must have been like in the '30s, when the young Lotte Lenya sang the works of Brecht and Weill, and cabaret fused with art.
Ironic Couplets. The resemblance to Brecht and Weill does not end with Elly. The elusive melodies seem, at first, to be mere cloaks for Brel's verse. But they bear constant repetition —indeed, some enthusiasts have come to the Brel show as often as 56 times. As for his lyrics, the terse, ironic couplets recognize revelations beyond politics and fashion; they know that every man is an expatriate from the province of youth.
Sons of the thief, sons of the saint/ Who is the child without complaint?/ Sons of the great or sons unknown/ All were children like your own . . .
Those who have heard both Brel and Stone know that Elly is more than an interpreter of the composer; she is a soul sister whose versions often excel those of their creator. That is fortunate; it will be some time before Jacques Brel recrosses the Atlantic. He professes love for Americans in America, but he will not pay a visit to the U.S. until the war in Viet Nam is over. He is—literally—Up in the air about his present career. He has but one important possession, a private airplane, in which he darts about the Continent. He has divested himself of home and wife. He has not appeared onstage since a brief 1968 success in the Paris version of Man of La Mancha. Alone, Brel arrives and takes off where he pleases, an almost fictional figure even to his countrymen. But late next month he is scheduled to land in Paris to appear with Elly Stone in a special for French television. It is one appearance he looks forward to—in contrast to his costar. "Brel is the master," she says. "I'm scared."