David Byrne Does Broadway on the Fly – The New Yorker

David Byrne let his guitar slump on its strap for a moment, after opening his Broadway show, American Utopia, with a fiery rendition of The Revolution. He looked wearily into the audience and asked, Wouldnt it be heavenly if nothing ever happened? People laughed. Byrne let out a hard snort. The joke, gift-wrapped as a question, needed no elaboration. The subtext, the audience understood, was Treat yourself tonight, since the world is collapsing.

Not so long before, during the week leading up to Christmas, American Utopias producers had cancelled five performances. Too many cast and crew members had been sidelined by COVID, with seven testing positive, even though theyd been vaccinated. Rather than close the show, Byrne announced on social media, You can cash in your ticket, or you can have whats behind this curtain, which he billed as a show youll never, ever see again. He was offering a retooled American Utopia, featuring an assortment of songs reimagined by a scaled-back band of musicians. Were just gonna come up with a show, you know? Hey! he said. This is our opportunity to make lemonade from COVID lemons.

In a recent Zoom call, Byrne explained how it happened: We looked at the situation and we mapped it out. We said, O.K., we can do this with the people we have left. He paused to adjust a strap on his blue-and-white striped overalls. With fewer crew members, we could not do Burning Down the House. That is a big onevery popular with the audience. He continued, Onstage, its Look, were going to show you whats possible.

It got hectic as fuck, Bobby Wooten III, the bassist, said, on a separate Zoom call. Wooten, who has played with every version of the show, said that although they were using the same stage and some of the same people, the show were putting on is completely different. Were doing songs that basically none of us, outside of David, have ever played beforelike, thirteen new songs. He went on, We literally had eight hours of rehearsal the Sunday before and we had four hours the day of. And then each person put in a lot of time outside of that.

Remembering the music! Remembering the lyrics! Byrne said on the Zoom, chuckling. Hed been pleased to see a lot of younger people in the audience lately, and he noticed that other, older fans had come more than once. I thought, Wait a minute. Ive seen that couple at a previous show, he said. Theyre back!

On a bare stage, Byrne and company appear in shiny gray suits, with no shoes. Between songs, while band members switch up instruments and regroup, he tells stories. He winces if his punch lines come out garbled, and sometimes he wears the Who, me? grin of a seven-year-old who hassnagged your wallet and then offers to help you find it.

On the third night of the experiment, the audience, many of whom were double-masked, was palpably nervous. Heads swivelled, as people reassured themselves that their neighbors had their masks on tightly enough. By the time Byrne sang the Talking Heads hit Once in a Lifetime, they relaxed.

I could see them listen to each other, Ayla Huguenot, a seventeen-year-old musician in the audience, said of the band members. At certain points, Byrne would turn around and motion, like, O.K., lets do that chorus one more time. And then they would all kind of look at each other to see when they were going to end it. Her friend Carter Nyhan, also a musician, appreciated the teamwork, too, including some bumps here and there.

By the closing number, Road to Nowhere, the whole audience was on its feet and dancing. It was an anti-Broadway evening, an unapologetic display of solidarity and trust amid a cloud of anxiety. When the curtain fell, masks could not muffle the rapturous hollers.

On the Zoom, Byrne had said, I do feel a lot of love coming from the audience. I try not to take it personally. I tend to think to myself, They dont really love me. They dont know me as a person. They love what Ive done and what that means to them. He added, And I try and reciprocate thatbe very present and real. Let them know that Im talking to them in that moment.

He is enjoying the scrappy element of the show. I think I might miss how we had to really scramble, he said. But, performing in the era of COVID, theres nothing glamorous about that, either. Ill be happy when thats all over, when the audiences can take off their masks.

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David Byrne Does Broadway on the Fly - The New Yorker