Brasil: as coisas do Samba at the Warehouse Theater 6/14/02

Alan Greenblatt

Can a show that opens with a group of dancers who are scantily clad, save for tall feathered headdresses, and closes with the audience clapping along and joining in with the dancing, be a bad thing? The pastiche show "Brasil: as coisas do Samba" (the soul of samba), at the Warehouse Theater on 7th Street NW through July 7, offers yet another example -- upbeat and ingratiating -- of the powers of music and dance simply presented.

The show presents the history of Brazil over the last 40 years in truncated form, in brief lectures, dramatic scenes and more or less amusing skits. All of this provides context for the many musical numbers, which survey the country's greatest hits over the same period of time. Some of the spoken material is didactic without being informative ("When the military dictatorship took power in our country, it became more important than ever to sing"). The acting is generally filled with more goofy, amateur charm than emotional weight.

But it all goes down easily enough and you can just think of it as briefly stalling time while the musical performer change outfits.

There's a fairly large cast but the obvious star of the show is Mariani Ebert. Ebert once won an award for her performance in a Brazilian production of "The Little Mermaid," apparently. Here, she displays many talents -- a lovely presence who has a winning way with comedy and a smooth and sure singing voice. Ebert is more than capable of taking part in the pleasant if unoriginal dance steps.

Her flirtacious duet with local Latin jazz star Patrick De Santos (he'll be singing this Thursday at Blues Alley) on Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Aguas de Marco" was an obvious highlight of the evening. De Santos is an amusing stiff in his brief dramatic moments but then he sets loose and sings in that lovely, high voice of his, carrying slow love ballads with aplomb.

The other singers are adequate but true to the spirit of the songs, except for Marietta Ulacia, whose pitch on Jobim's lovely "Insensatez" wobbled scarily. The six-piece band was excellent whether playing rhythm numbers or rock 'n roll.

The songs are done in Portuguese, of course, but the dialogue is in Spanish. Simultaneous translation is provided to Anglos via radio headsets. The Warehouse, located across from the future convention center, is usually the site of Mark Ruppert's variety shows. It has been slightly remade in a quasi-nightclub setting, with cafe-style table lining the stage. Tickets for most performances have been available at Ticketplace, the half-price booth located in the Old Post Office Pavilion. For the umpteenth time, I would like to remind DC residents of this important theater/concert service at http://www.cultural-alliance.org/tickets/today.html

John Scheinman, who has written many an amusing skit performed at the Warehouse, reacts to yesterday's column on "Porgy and Bess" (which the Post liked a lot more than I did: I saw West Side Story performed at Wolf Trap a couple years back and made a kept vow never to attend another theatrical performance there. Awful is

gracious. I shudder even thinking about its mounting of Robert Goulet in Camelot. I saw Porgy & Bess probably 22 years ago at the Kennedy Center Opera House, a show revival with great fanfare. I believed then what I believe now -- the songs are best suited to jazz singers rather than operatics. Summertime is a song for a voice of natural gift -- and longing -- not trained pyrotechnics. And that's not to say jazz singers don't practice . . .