ROCK: Elizabeth Williams
WITH the hippie era now the focus of one-generation-on nostalgia, it was to be expected that someone would tackle Janis Joplin. Like contempories Jim Morrison and Cas Elliot, she epitomised the late Sixties — the Summer of Love, flower power and drugs — and their deaths marked the end of the era.
But unlike The Doors and The Mamas and Papas, Joplin’s music has not enjoyed regular airplay on popular radio stations in the intervening years, so this tribute is as much a rediscovery as a revival.
PJ Powers, who plays in A Tribute to Janis Joplin at the Sound Stage in Midrand, is perhaps better known as one of South Africa’s first “crossover” rock artists — a white singer who appealed to the wider market during the nihilistic Eighties, when such things were rare — than a theatre/cabaret performer. Her distinctive voice and strong stage presence would be a liability when imitating one of the greats of the rock/blues scene, I thought.
Wrong. A Tribute to Janis Joplin is a triumph for Powers. She subsumes her ego in a rare performance which is at times funny, poignant and just plain brilliant.
Whether it is imitating Joplin’s Texan twang — replete with the characteristic “man” which punctuated most of what Joplin had to say — or getting the phrasing in Piece of My Heart perfectly right, Powers captures not just the sound, but the essence of the “Pearl”.
The show, which comprises slides and anecdotes as well as songs, was written and directed by Maralin Vanrenen. It pulls no punches on the wilder side of Joplin’s life, without resorting to sensationalism or becoming sentimental. The band, led by musical director Tigger Reunert, keep everything tight, but it is very much a one- woman show. As Joplin might say: Get it while you can.