Deep in the Heart of Taxes

by Joseph Pehrson ©2005

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES OF NEW MUSIC PRESENT
TWO MUSICAL THEATER PREMIERES BY BEN YARMOLINSKY. Alice; April 15th Blues. Melanie Mitrano, soprano; Bruce Rameker, baritone; Silvie Jensen, alto; the “April 15th Chorus and Orchestra. St. Michael’s Parish Hall, 225 W. 99th St., NY, NY. Friday,
April 15, 2005.

April 15th is surely a taxing day, but Ben Yarmolinsky has been doing his best to mitigate the pain. A very clever fellow, Yarmolinsky has written a short musical theater piece about that dreaded day, and the work is great fun. Called April 15th Blues, this work, naturally, had to be presented on Friday, April 15th. (We’re assuming most of the members of the audience, who filed into St. Michael’s Parish Hall, had already filed their taxes.) In a musical theater tradition, Yarmolinsky’s plot is spoken with no recitative, and it’s replete with pop-influenced songs. The “book,” also written by Yarmolinsky, is extremely clever as we follow the day of April 15th in the life of a freelance New York singer/actress, here sung in an exceptional performance by soprano Melanie Mitrano.

Using an appropriate conceit, Yarmolinsky has the voice of the IRS reading the tax form instructions over loudspeakers and sounding like “Big Brother” as our poor protagonist, “Jane Q. Public” tries haplessly to fill in her tax forms. Eventually she realizes, in an extraordinarily damning indictment of our government and its tax system, that she is only able to exist by what she has earned “under the table” as a waitress, teacher, babysitter, etc. This was the notable “Under the Table Tango.” As our protagonist proclaims, “You’d do the same if you were me.” Finally, she finds that since nothing has been withheld on her 1099s, she owes a substantial sum. Desperation ensues, and it is only when she realizes that she can call on an old boyfriend she had previously dumped, Jeremy Cohen, CPA, sung and performed engagingly by Bruce Rameker, that salvation is possible.

In one of the funniest moments of this production, Jeremy Cohen, the CPA, loosens his tie and does a kind of Elvis number, “Deduct, Deduct” where he gives Jane advice as to what to do on her Schedule C. Needless to say, Jane is forced to exercise “creative license” and deducts whatever comes to her imagination. The technique works, and Ms. Public is saved from taxes and, what would be even worse, banishment from her career in New York to her hometown of Buffalo or, in an even worse scenario, jail. One has the sense that Yarmolinsky, a freelance composer/ performer for many years, knows the “ins and outs” of the self-employed tax filing regulations, an essential in making this situation real and adding to the hilarity.

April 15th Blues was orchestrated for piano, violin and cello with touches of percussion but, at the end, John Bollinger plays vibes as the theatre darkens and a line of tax filers, looking like ghosts or living zombies, marches up towards the stage. This is the decisive moment of tax return filing at the Post Office at midnight, an end to the ordeal. April 15th Blues, written in 1998, was commissioned for the now defunct record label CRI, and it sold briskly, for good reason. However, I believe one would really have to see the work performed to get a full sense of it. In short, it is one of the most engaging and entertaining short theater pieces I have seen. It’s pretty brilliant, all in all.

The first theater work of the evening was an earlier one from 1981, Alice, with words from Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Originally presented as a puppet show when Yarmolinsky resided in Tangier, it also contains much engaging music in, mostly, a popular vein. Alto Silvie Jensen made a very pretty and engaging Alice. Yarmolinsky follows many of the familiar plot-lines and characters of Carroll’s two books such as “Humpty Dumpty,” “Tweedledum & Tweedledee “ and “Jabberwocky.” These set pieces were all well done, but my very favorite was “Advice from a Caterpillar” near the beginning. This piece really “cooked.” I thought these engaging numbers could have been used in places as “background” music to the spoken dialogue. Maybe I just wanted to hear them some more. But this method could also have created more of a sense of continuity, rather than the predictable pattern of set-number, spoken dialogue, set-number, etc. which included a fair amount of stopping and starting. There were also some places where the voices did not fit the range of the music very well. Undoubtedly there wasn’t time happen too frequently.

Yarmolinsky’s theatre pieces would be very well suited to presentation in a club atmosphere, and I hope he gets the opportunity to showcase them in that kind of informal setting.