I’ve seen David Cale on stage in a number of shows over the past 20 or so years, from Present Laughter on Broadway to the New Group’s My Night With Reg to, most recently, The Total Bent at the Public Theater. But I’m ashamed to say I’ve never seen one of his solo shows before We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time, which just opened at the Public’s intimate Anspacher Theater. Frankly, I’m sorry I waited so long.
[Read Jesse Oxfeld’s ★★★★ review here.]
Cale has a serene, good-humored demeanor that instantly bonds him with the audience. You want to sit down with him and chat about Liza Minnelli—perhaps over lemon-meringue pie. Or maybe just listen to him talk about birds. Even if you don’t give a fig about finches, Cale’s tales of breeding, feeding, and nurturing them—he started breeding birds at age 10, and his aviary housed about 300 at one point (“I couldn’t bear to part with the babies,” he sighs)—are pure delights.
In his childhood home of Luton—“voted ‘The Ugliest City in England,’” he informs us—a young David surrounded himself with feathered friends (plus a tortoise) to escape his arguing parents, to whom We’re Only Alive is largely devoted. Cale quickly morphs into his father, Ron Egleton, who proudly claims he gave his son “his fear” and calls prison the happiest time in his life: “I got new eye glasses in prison. Had my teeth fixed. Lost a lot of weight, ’cause I couldn’t drink in prison. No champagne in the nick. I looked like a million bucks.”
Cale takes on the character of his mother, Barbara—“Barbara, the invisible woman,” she calls herself—with even greater ease. “I’ve always had an inexplicably deep attraction to skinny boys with big noses, and intense eyes. Boys that look like birds, I suppose,” she confesses. His younger brother, the model-plane-building Simon, makes a brief appearance as well.
Cale manages to pack a lot of plot—including his mother’s death and his father’s incarceration—into 90 minutes. And though the songs (Matthew Dean Marsh cowrote the music) aren’t your traditional toe-tapping–style showtunes, I can still recall the slightly haunting “Canada Geese,” which Cale sings a cappella to start the show; the melancholy “Simon,” sung as his bookish, Beatles-loving brother (“And I make model planes and hang them from the ceiling/ I paint my model planes with everything I’m feeling”); and the groovy “All the Smart Girls (Listened to Joni Mitchell),” which recounts teenage David’s newfound female friendships.
But as gifted as Cale is, as a performer and writer, We’re Only Alive’s greatest asset may be director Robert Falls’ beautifully uncomplicated production. (Falls also staged the show in its premiere at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, where he’s the artistic director; the Goodman is a coproducer here.) Behind Cale, a string-heavy six-person orchestra serves as both accompaniment and a moody backdrop (lighting designer Jennifer Tipton creates stunning silhouettes with the musicians). And the only bit of embellishment on the entire stage: gilded birdcages hanging from the ceiling. Naturally.
We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time opened June 27, 2019, at the Public Theater and runs through July 11. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
