Tag Archives: modern luv

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre

Modern Luv About to be All Up in Your Inbox, NYC

Mark Siano and Opal Peachey have created something weird and sexy (“swexy” riffs Siano) out of their alternate-universe two-online-worlds-colliding cabaret-musical Modern Luv. It was fresh from a well-received run at the Triple Door when I saw its “unplugged” incarnation Tuesday night at the Rendezvous Jewelbox.

I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard at a musical since Gutenberg! The Musical–which also featured a small but hard-working cast, dreams of making it big, and largely imagination-based production values. Modern Luv‘s cabaret roots are evident in the easy informality of its meta-narration, and the way Siano beams out at you as if you’re all guests at his party. He’s got a lounge singer’s sweaty sheen and broad smile, and displays enough jack-of-all-stages hoofer aptitude that I started picturing his soft-rock Emcee in Cabaret.

Essentially, Modern Luv is, as the title indicates, a love story, but, as the “luv” suggests, not a sappy one. Actually, there are several loves: the Seattle Siano-New York Peachey encounter, sure, but also that of disaffected hipsters for musicals, of home (Amish country, Seattle), of our increasingly virtual reality. It is only okay, after all, to for a hipster to love his or her smart phone. To love-love someone verbally is…outré. You must luv them instead.

Mark Siano

These kinds of semiotic distinctions are where most of the humor in Modern Luv arises. From the opening “Texting song,” followed by the instant-classic “Up in Your Inbox,” the show wastes no time letting you know that you are an urbane, plugged-in, roué who has been around the e-block. Every song is loaded with signifiers, and Siano and Peachey are, as fish born in this sea, able to perform them for you winningly, with the assistance of back-up dancers.

Siano’s Minority-Report-style Googling of Peachey is especially on the nose, in its translation to the stage. It relies on the audience’s willingness to go with it, but that’s where the participatory charm of show grows on you, watching Peachey impersonate her Facebook photo gallery.

There’s an improvisatory flair to some of the interstitial scenes–thanks in part to the participation of David Swidler, who I won’t review because I find him hilarious in real life, even that time, he assures me, he was in real pain after the accident. But there’s also improvisatory hurry-up set-ups (Larry David is often guilty of this–“So…uh…what’s…you’re upset with me because I did [some inappropriate Larry David thing]?” he’ll instruct his scene partner).

With a range of pop-styled music by Siano and performed by The Enablers, the show boasts both a Soft Rock Medley and Broadway Musical Medley (“It was like what was in my heart just came right up and out my throat!” says the impish Peachey) that rejoice in the power of music to overcome suppressed emotion. When the audience joined in on a soft-rock lyric at Siano’s urging, it was with the presence and timing of a choir bursting to sing.

“She Can’t Call,” a song about the interruption of their romance also features what I think is the first musical portrayal of “Damn You Auto-Correct”–here, a hooded gremlin who runs in and physically replaces words with mad lib items. “I’m Not The Man I am Online” lets Siano drop the act a bit, and express (finally) some unmediated emotion (no disrespect to his soft-rock stylings, which demonstrate an esoteric technical proficiency in yelps, sotto voce baritone, and falsetto).

“We can leave if it’s lame,” whispered someone in the dark before the show started. They didn’t. They laughed a lot, instead, and maybe…just maybe…learned a little something about love, too.

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre

Tuesday is Modern Luv‘s Last Seattle Stand, Before New York Calls

Seattle soft-rock god Mark Siano is taking his cabaret-musical collaboration with not-so-soft-rock Opal Peachey, Modern Luv, on the road to New York City. To prepare for a smaller venue than Seattle’s Triple Door, where, Siano tells me, they had five well-sold shows, they’re holing up at the Rendezvous’ Jewelbox Theater for a one-night-only, 21+ show on April 10 (tickets: $15 advance).

“It’s an ‘Unplugged’ version,” Siano says, featuring a piano and a drum kit since the 65-seat theater doesn’t allow for much in the way of a band. But other than that, not all that much has changed. The Triple Door audiences laughed at all the right places, and one show sold out entirely. He’s tightened it up to a streamlined 90 minutes with no intermission, and changed a few Seattle-centric jokes that New York audiences wouldn’t be expected to get. A controversial “Seattle vs. New York” compare-and-contrast has stayed in the picture.

Modern Luv, like the “5th ACT’s” First Date, takes on love in a time of social media, but Siano says it’s “half-fiction, half-memoir.” He and Peachey are not an item, but they did “discover” each other online when Peachey showed up on YouTube covering a song Siano had, if I have this correctly, written the lyrics to. From this small spark, a “musical about cabaret performers” was born, with Siano and Peachey playing themselves in an alternate, rom-com universe. They spoke with Seattle Gay Scene about the show here.

Showman Siano is a man of many hats, so after his New York excursion, he returns, in a way, for Cafe Nordo’s May show, Cabinet of Curiosities. Set in Washington Hall, it’s a “a multi-room private collection of culinary exhibits,” and one of the rooms will be Siano’s creation. He’s also involved with the much-lauded and occasional sketch troupe The Habit–they’re preparing for a three-week run of a new show this November. (Full disclosure: We are also involved with at least one The Habit member, who pops up occasionally in these pages, and get your mind out of the gutter.)

Finally, because you’ve read this far, I can confirm that the “sparkle-tards” that Siano & Co. are accustomed to swanning about in are custom-made creations, from Sewing Specialties.