Dionne Warwick’s self-indulgent ego trip

by Seth Rogovoy

(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 23, 1998) -- At the outset of her show, “Dionne Sings Dionne: I Won’t Stop Now” -- which premiered on Thursday night and continues at the Berkshire Theatre Festival today and tomorrow -- Dionne Warwick promises an evening of revealing insights into her life and career. (Actually, it’s not Warwick who makes the promise; it’s “Barbara,” Warwick’s alter ego, but more on her in a minute.)

By the end of the performance, nearly three hours later, Warwick had intentionally revealed nothing an audience member could not have learned about her in the four minutes or so it takes to read the entry on the pop-soul singer in the “Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll.” What she did unwittingly reveal, however, was her lack of talent as a dramatist, storyteller and actress, and her utter lack of perspective on the life and times of Dionne Warwick.

With such a large chip on her shoulder weighing her down, it is to Warwick ’s credit that she was able to get through the confusing muddle of her two-act show, which with the aid of her excellent nine-piece band was punctuated by a generous selection of well-executed musical numbers spanning her entire career.

Unfortunately, to get to those songs the audience had to sit through Warwick’s awkward, self-indulgent recitation of her life and career achievements, rendered with little to no humor, modesty or narrative invention.

“I’m not Dionne -- my name is Barbara,” began Warwick, explaining that Barbara would be our “tour guide” through Dionne Warwick’s life. This was a clumsy, ill-conceived attempt at imposing some theatricality on Warwick’s dry narration by constructing medium between the audience and a Warwick who in does not seem prepared to reveal much of herself in the first place. It also allowed Warwick to pay tribute to herself throughout the evening while ostensibly not having to take responsibility for saying such immodest things as, “Dionne is an absolute giver, always doing something for someone.”

Unlike Ray Davies’s show at BTF two years ago, in which the founder and leader of the rock band The Kinks focused in great detail on a short period in his career as a way of illuminating an entire movement in popular culture, Warwick has chosen her entire career as her subject, and with no reference to any greater cultural context. Unfortunately, Warwick is not forthcoming about anything except for the most generic descriptions about her career, which could be summarized thusly: she was discovered, she made records, they were hits, she went through some ups and downs, that’s it.

Warwick offered no enlightenment about any aspect of her work. Her story, such as it was, consisted almost entirely of name-dropping. Along the way, we hear the names Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Lena Horne and Nelson Mandela. All we learn about them is that Dietrich taught her to shop, Horne taught her to walk on stage, and Sinatra warned her that there’d be bad times to come. We don’t even get that much about Mandela -- all we hear is she met him, period. We don’t even know when or where or in what context.

Considering how integral a role composer Burt Bacharach played in her career, it would have been fascinating to hear what Warwick had to say about just what it was about his music that seemed to work so well for her. Or how involved, if at all, she became in the songwriting process with Bacharach and lyricist Hal David. Or how she was able to master Bacharach’s complex musical syntax.

Instead, all we get about that is that someone once asked her, how do you sing this stuff? The answer: “very carefully.”

Of life on the road, Warwick offered this insight: “Lots of planes, oh, lots of planes.” Of the triumphant years of the ‘60s, chock full of hits: “Lots of laughs; she had a good time; those were great years.” This was typical of the sort of window Warwick opens -- or rather, doesn’t open -- on what it was like to be Dionne Warwick.

Her most emotional moment? Barbara tells us that Warwick was “crushed” when Sonny and Cher were chosen to sing the Bacharach-penned title track to the movie “Alfie.” Never mind that Warwick went on to cut her own hit version of the tune. This was typical of the sort of emotional confusion and contradiction that plagues the show.

Eventually it gets hard to keep track of which times were “good” and which were “bad” -- Warwick herself doesn’t seem clear about it. She pays tribute to Bacharach and David for all the great songs they wrote for her, but then, like a spoiled child, expects sympathy after the songwriting duo splits up, leaving her “abandoned.” We are then supposed to chuckle when she tells us she sued them and won, and even moreso when it turns out she becomes even more commercially successful than ever in the ‘70s with songs by other writers. If this is supposed to be somehow ironic, the joke is unintentionally on Warwick, as her renditions of these songs demonstrate how woefully inferior these bloated, generic pop ballads were to the Bacharach-David material.

Which brings us back to the one redeeming quality of the performance. Although she has lost some range in the higher register, Warwick is still a marvelous singer who can chart the inscrutable byways of a Bacharach melody like no other, all the time keeping perfect pitch, on songs including “Walk on By,” “Promises, Promises,” “I Say a Little Prayer for You” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”

While at times her voice exhibited strain, at other times she exhibited explosions of vocal power that showed where contemporary divas like Mariah Carey and Warwick’s cousin Whitney Houston learned their craft. For the price of sitting through Warwick’s interminable, self-dramatizing blather, fans enjoyed the opportunity to see and hear the singer up close and personal in an intimate atmosphere. If only Warwick herself would respond to the creative potential of that intimacy.

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