Barb Jungr
Hard Rain – The Songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen
59E59 Theaters, NYC, October 28, 2014
Reviewed by Elizabeth Ahlfors for Cabaret Scenes
Barb Jungr is the music she sings about. She finds her way inside the song and stays there. She takes over the stage and the familiar exhibits a whole new complexity and personality. Interpreting pop songs is where Jungr shines and in her new show, Hard Rain at 59E59, she returns to a favorite, Bob Dylan, and make it a shared program with material by Leonard Cohen, too.
From different eras, both artists have voiced strong opinions about politics, passion and philosophy that play smoothly together and tell still contemporary stories in their singular ways. The tone of the show is set in the ripping opener, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” where Dylan prophesizes people’s anger against hypocrisy and the culture around him. Cohen’s “First We Take Manhattan” warns of the extremists who captivate popular attention. It all continues from there.
Following is the harsh story why “Blind Willie McTell” sings the blues, including Dylan’s often contrasting images of slavery (“Hear the cracking of the whips/Smell that sweet magnolia blooming”).
His “Masters of War” is a blunt condemnation of war and Jungr’s version burns with the fury of the lyrics.
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Years later, Dylan stated it was a pacifistic statement against war, referring to President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex, but the spirit of the early 1960s is what drives the song and that spirit is delivered by Jungr.
Jungr is a passionate and meticulous performer, delivering lyrics with perception and emotion and patter that informs in the same vein. With facial and physical expressiveness, she is all over the stage—dancing, posing, letting the audience feel as cynically as Dylan did, that “Things Have Changed.
” She proves to her audience that Cohen was right in his bleak “Everybody Knows” (“…
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the war is over/…the good guys lost”). On the other hand, there is a somewhat optimistic tone to Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom,” although telling things as they are seems to always be the tone Jungr takes in her selections.
With arrangements by Sam Wallace, Barb Jungr is accompanied by Tracy Stark on piano and percussionist Mike Lunoe, who add to the honesty with supportive imagination.
(Photo: Carol Rosegg)
