And so the pretense is dropped like a name: Israelien, I got blessed by Him once live and I got a stub here to prove it; the extravaganza more like the injoke — the extrava-ganze, the allinclusive, oneprice, oneticket, oneshow one-nighttime only now with more musaf…upcurtains reworked after the opening acts, and then the overture anthem, upon an expensive display of lasering lights along with the introduction of that comely couple known as Smoke & Mirrors, overlaid with Der’s recorded exhortative in a voiceover the quality of which’s hoarsed worse by the night, scratchier, worn to a hiss, welcoming everybody, introducing and thanking, mentioning merchandise, setting the tone. Segue to a set featuring the pit orchestra again with a sleight’s fast, slut-tier than flirty cut to the dancinggirls, the Benettes — chubby virgins, but intelligent, as it’s claimed in the playbill, whose looseleafed content makeshifts the program, crying that they’re kind at least, sensitively single, amazingly over-achieving; quoting praise lifted from the sag of their mothers: she’s a good girl, you’d do well to applaud — for a number that’s presented in two tableaux one of secular succubi the other of lilin; then, another set from the pit, this with an exciting lead shofar feature that culminates on an expert High C, the girls out again in change of costume, now with a little stretching (too tight, they’ve put on weight, it’s the roomservice): Benettes as peacocks doing a routine of sequined sequences, the whole rathskeller gig, the burlesk and the topless, bottomless, ever refillable cancan, them up in gildgirded birdcages, feathered nests and upskirty swings, behind a quartet drawn from their ranks referred to in not one review as the Four Whores of the Apocalypse tonight doing a few USOstyle girlgroup numbers if only for the Fourth’s hell of it, the last sake less of patriotism than of their nostalgia — anything, then, in the public domain: this a starry spangly requiem, without bigbeat, without backbeat, the tin not panned anymore but made silvery threnody, the beguine once begun now elegiacally ended, the trot become outfoxed to a dirge: don’t sit under the appletree / (with anyone else but me), anyone else but me, anyone else but me, no, no, no, then the orchestra again in a medley of your favorite zmirot you love to hate, harmonized alongside many of your least favorite nigunim you hate to love but have to own anyway and now made conveniently available to the public in one (1) boxed set between the banter, accompanying a candled ceremonial, roasttoasting memoryfest, a participatorily projected montage of “This Is Your Life…” a drum solo under the death of the Affiliated edited together out of stock Army footage and scraps schnorred off the remains of the networks; then, a hazy fading out on the anthem again, exitmusic for intermission, a pause for refreshments — an opportunity made the most of to hock them schlock in the lobby.
