come to a play! Frances R.

[jw@math.mit.edu]

1) Having recently returned from the holidays, I am just beginning to
   wade through my collection of mail. Therefore, I just discovered,
   thanks to Dave's posting, the Kate Orgy scheduled on the Harvard
   radio station for Friday night, 5 to 10. That is to say, about 2
   hours ago (at which point I was in the middle of a marathon showing
   of The Prisoner in an MIT dorm). I might not have listened to the
   whole Orgy anyway (what's the point when one has Kate on CD
   anyway?) but presumably there were at least SOME interesting
   interviews/explications thrown in between the songs.  Did anyone
   make a tape? Can anyone summarize the procedings?

2) Scott A. McIntyre writes of his recent, dramatic conversion to Kate
   after the received vision (sorry, audience) of her voice on the PG
   album So.  I think it shows true spirituality to be so open to Kate
   as to be converted by this alone! (True, Wuthering Heights had
   about the same effect on me (all those years ago (sigh)) but Don't
   Give Up is just not in the same category.) So, welcome to the fold,
   Scott. How long before YOU have all the albums on CD? I had over
   half of them before my CD player was even hooked up...

      While I am thinking about it, and as far as absolutely
   transfixing voices go, I want to mention my favourite singer/actor
   (as opposed to Kate who is my favourite singer/songwriter): Frances
   Ruffelle.  Frances can only be heard as of now on the soundtrack to
   Les Miserables.  (Which is brilliant, and something everyone should
   own. Buy the London version; although Frances is also on the
   Broadway version, the original London cast and orchestration are
   heaps better.) (Actually, she is presumably singing on the original
   London soundtrack of Starlight Express too, but it is not good
   music, and is anyway nearly impossible to find in the United
   States.)

      Frances has a high-pitched, somewhat breathy voice with some
   rough edges which make it very expressive. The first time I heard
   it, on stage in London, I was ecstatically translated. When she
   sings, it is as though a divine agency is singing through her. I
   can hear all of her vocal mannerisms in her natural speaking voice
   (after a lot of practice; when I first spoke with her I was shocked
   by how ordinary she sounded) so in a sense her full singing voice
   develops naturally from it, but there must be something more there,
   and I can only call it divine. (Okay? Point taken? Listen to
   her!!!)

      Anyway, Frances has clearly been helped to this point by being
   in the right place at the right time: in Les Miz she was given
   brilliant material to work with, and an immortal character to
   create. (She played Eponine, one of the second tier of characters
   but one at the very heart of my structural interpretation of the
   story.) Whenever I saw her die on stage, I cried profoundly, and
   the first few hearings of the album had the same effect. Her other
   great song, On My Own, is no less moving, and I have NO IDEA why it
   wasn't picked up and played as a single on the radio (or at least
   on stations with taste).

      Frances told me (during her visit to Boston in December) that
   she was cutting an album with RCA, which will probably not be
   released until the summer. Two reasons for the delay: 1) evidently
   she has some concern about taking the time to do it right, and
   inject some high production values; 2) personal reasons. So, this
   summer we find out whether or not she is going to set out (with
   Sinead O'Conner (?) and Jane Siberry (?)) down the path to Nirvana
   blazed by Kate. I believe she has the talent to do it. (Don't be
   fooled. Frances says she is NOT writing her own songs. But I said
   she was a /actor, not a /songwriter.)

3) Love-Hounds in the Boston area might want to come to see the play I
   am producing next week.

      [	Shit!  It's probably too late now, since this message has been
        sitting in the queue for two weeks.  I'm sorry, JW!  -- |>oug ]

   Not that it has anything to do with Kate, or even with music, but I
   am telling everyone to come, since we need an audience. The play is
   _Dogg's_Hamlet,_Cahoot's_Macbeth_, it is by Tom Stoppard, and
   without being too involved it is very funny indeed.  It is FREE, it
   is at 8pm, it is at MIT (in room 34-101, which is just off Vassar
   Street, but your best bet is to get to MIT and ask!)  If anyone
   does show up, be sure and hunt me down and remind me who you are in
   case we've met at Katemas or something.  Just to tease a little
   more: the play is partly written in an invented language called
   Dogg(erel), in which each word is the same as an English word, but
   means something different. Take this line from Macbeth, for
   example:

          Sackcloth never pullovers! - wickets to flicks.
          Such Birnam cakeshops carousals Dunisnane!
          ... Dovetails oboes Malcolm? Crossly windowframed!
  
   You pick up the language as we go along, which is not as difficult
   as it sounds. If this sounds like YOUR idea of a good time, come along.
   I promise substance as well as hilarity.

                                       Julian West
                                      iKs mAThEmat- 
                                       M    I    T