[VARIETY SHOW REVIEW] Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on June 29, 2009 - 11:58am
Classical Music
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TANGLEWOOD
Koussevitzky Shed
A Prairie Home Companion
Host: Garrison Keiller
Special Guests: Steve Martin with the Stone Canyon Rangers; Martin Sheen; Nashville instrumentalist Stuart Duncan; vocalist Heather Masse
Surprise Guest: Arlo Guthrie
June 27, 2009
 
Review by Seth Rogovoy
 
(LENOX, Mass., June 27, 2009) – Perhaps being at Tanglewood makes Garrison Keillor stretch more than usual in his writing; perhaps the unique confluence of the special guests at Saturday night’s program – a live broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion” from the Shed – lent itself to such stretching. Or maybe it was just getting reacquainted with the public radio program, an old style mélange of music, monologue, and radio drama, made it a thoroughly enjoyable evening of environment.
 
 
Keillor always tailors his Tanglewood broadcasts to the venue and the region, and this year was no exception, including the surprise announcement just before the show that folksinger Arlo Guthrie, a Berkshire resident going on something like forty years, would be joining the already stellar lineup, including actors Martin Sheen and Steve Martin, the latter in his newly favored role as bluegrass banjoist.
 
 
Keillor’s skits, or radio dramas, and his shorter monologues were peppered with references to the Shed, Berkshire wildlife (in all its forms), and student musicians. One of the skits was a clever play on Canyon Ranch, a souped-up Western in which this ranch featured a spa and lean cuisine. On the way to the spa, the group, which included Martin Sheen, stopped into Arlo’s Dewdrop Inn, where the proprietor played a loving parody of his father’s anthem, “This Land Is Your Land,” called “This Song Is My Song (It Isn’t Your Song).” He even poked gentle fun at Pete Seeger, saying go hear him if you want a sing-along.
 
 
Keillor and chief vocalist Heather Masse, who seemingly can sing anything from Cole Porter pop to blues to jazz to the dark folk-rock of Richard Thompson, all of which she tackled on Saturday night, also sang a parody of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” which Guthrie probably got a big kick out of while listening backstage.
 
 
Those featuring that Steve Martin would only play banjo needn’t have feared – while Martin was a stellar instrumentalist, backed by the ace Stone Canyon Rangers, on traditional-style numbers as well as one very forward-looking, Bela Fleck-style progressive bluegrass, jazz-influenced composition – he and Keillor engaged in good-hearted banter, Keillor trying his hardest to divine just what it is about the banjo that keeps Martin coming back to it. Keillor even subjected the latter to a string of banjo jokes, which Martin sucked up gracefully before having the last laugh with his virtuosic fingerpicking.
 
 
Sheen was somewhat underutilized, although he was onstage enough to provide one of the evening’s biggest laughs, when he mistook the word “dice” in his script for a similar word ending in the letter “k,” followed by the word “sucker.” It brought down the house, while one assumes radio listeners were spared the shock – the horror, Captain Willard? – with a bleep courtesy of the five-second delay from live-to-broadcast.
 
 
Local hero Guthrie was given plenty of airtime, and he sang several original songs – one dedicated to his sister-in-law, Juanita – and a Jimmie Rodgers tune, on which Keillor harmonized.
 
 
One of the strangest occurrences of the evening was totally lost on radio listeners: looking out on the lawn from the Shed, for a good fifteen minutes or so, there was a sunshower that drenched only half the lawn, while the other half remained dry. The half that was rained on, however, was the half closest to the main entrance, and therefore the half where most patrons were sitting.
 
 
There was a festive air over the proceedings nevertheless, made more so by Keillor’s smart, freewheeling variety show, a magic of planning and improvisation and last-minute timing and pacing.
 
 
Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning editor-in-chief and critic-at-large.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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