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Paved Paradise Redux

Presented by Fusebox Festival at The Long Center for the Performing Arts

April 30-May 1, 2010

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“Paved Paradise is either the gentlest sendup or the sharpest homage you’ll ever see ... Kelly doesn’t so much impersonate Mitchell as channel her. There’s really only one word for the way Kelly plays with a famous, complicated persona and with our own ideas of the person behind that mask. It’s genius.” -- Boston Globe

2 time Obie Award wining performance artist John Kelly performs his legendary theatrical homage to the music of the great Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell. 'Paved Paradse Redux'.

No less a critic that Joni Mitchell herself has been surprised by the impact of Kelly’s tribute. “I was braced for a lampooning,” she told The New York Times. “I didn’t expect to be so touched. I cried in two places.” She has become one of Kelly’s biggest fans.

The New York Times review of Kelly’s show exclaimed, “There's drag, and then there's transformation through spiritual osmosis, and that's what John Kelly accomplishes with this tribute to the queen of the singer-song writers. … Magnificent.”

The show's concept is daringly simple: Joni in concert, with Kelly on vocals, guitar and dulcimer, backed by piano and bass. The "score" is an array of songs from the various stages of her career, from the earliest (and never recorded) 'Just Like Me', on to her most recent 'Shine'; the "book" of the show is her actual words, culled from interviews, and pirated concert recordings.

In 'Paved Paradise Redux', John Kelly has created a work that is at once haunting and hilarious; his musicianship is at its finest in an event that satisfies even the most hardened Joni-phile; the original arrangements, from acoustic to electric, incorporating her actual tunings, are utterly intact, and Kelly's spot-on original-key recreation of her vocals is uncanny. This is no ordinary drag show.