By Scott Barbarino***The human mind is a fascinating thing and Bruno Giraldi has one of the most fascinating minds I’ve ever seen splayed out on a stage. Listening to his “patter” was like hearing a beatnik reading his own poems … the words profound to him but deeply confusing at the same time … the tempo of the meandering words eventually mesmerizing you until it becomes thought-inducing.
Understand that I am reviewing a savant here. Concealing himself dead center stage at Don’t Tell Mama as the audience came into and sat in the room, this show had everything, including obvious hints of contortion in it. With subtlety and brilliantly, music director John Bowen unveils Bruno. I won’t give it away but this was one of the greatest openers I’ve ever seen! I gotta honestly say the vibe instantly became spellbinding as Bruno began to reveal himself slowly and deliberately and then boom —abracadabra!— This Lover Boy ends up in a red silk robe and starts his cabaret show Love or Death.
Queen’s “Somebody To Love” started the set list of this philosophical roller coaster. I mean Bruno knows a lot of philosophy regarding Love and Death—and there sure has been a lot of philosophical discussions for him to have philosophized about. Why there’s so much to study you can get a degree in it. For most of us we’ll leave it as Love is confusing and Death is confusing and honestly this show will only confuse you more as your brain rushes to understand what’s coming at it.
But I did enjoy trying to “understand” these different philosophies as Bruno named dropped Plato and others. The show was truly mesmerizing—there’s that word again. It was intense at times, like a murder mystery but where a real murder takes place. You couldn’t help but be absorbed. The tension built like a Gomez Addam’s train wreck that is perfectly staged to have the best … bad-best effect as the trains are rolling headlong to crash. And yet he didn’t.
Vocally Mr. Giraldi is challenged, but lesser so on the more theatrical selections such as Man of La Mancha‘s “Dulcinea” and “The Impossible Dream” … and his voice worked well when he sang in Spanish to close with “Resistire” (Giraldi is from Argentina). The story of his father’s death, followed by Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” was a heartbreaking moment. Honestly, you just stop thinking about the vocal limitations and absorb the entire experience.
