Spirit Of Janis Joplin Rocks Big Top

June 30th, 2006 at 05:42am Michael Conniff 2

Theatre Aspen artistic director David McClendon, the P.T. Barnum of Aspen, has the same challenge as the original circus entrepreneur when it came to getting people under the big top: if they don’t walk in the door, there’s no way they are going to be able to tell their friends about the elephant.

The elephant in the room again this year is irrepressible foot-stompin’ music, in the form of “Love, Janis,” the play about Janis Joplin inspired by the letters she sent back home to Port Arthur, Texas, from the extremely foreign outpost of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. The story covers her stratospheric career with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the solo work that ended in a drug overdose.

Like “Smokey Joe’s Café,” the eye-opener for Theatre Aspen in summer 2005, “Love, Janis” has the advantage of evoking a raft of memories conjured up by the Joplin discography. That means you are guaranteed a good time if you come to this play because of the timeless nature of her music and the tight, propulsive band of four that delivers the goods throughout. The result is a glimpse of what Joplin’s talent must have been, could have been, but the melancholic moment is sure to pass in light of the wild spirit that lives on in Rio Grande Park.

To get an even closer look, take a look-see at this video performance by Katrina Chester in Louisville not long ago.

“Love Janis” will continue to be performed through August 5, 2006, at the Theatre Aspen tent in Rio Grande Park.

Entry Filed under: Music, Theater, Blues, Aspen, Pitkin County, Women