Hilarity, music characterizes 'Jekyll and Hyde' tour

Arts week ended on a hilarious high note Sunday night with the musical antics of Peter Schickele at the IU Auditorium. "P.D.Q. Bach and Peter Schickele: The Jekyll and Hyde Tour" mixed impressive musical talent with old-fashioned stand-up comedy. Masquerading as the zany professor from the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, Schickele presented the music of Johann Sebastian Bach's "long lost son," P.D.Q. Bach, who is a well-crafted figment of Schickele's imagination. The character emerged through Schickele's ridiculous compositions and stage gags.\n"A lot of people accuse me of making P.D.Q. Bach up," Schickele said with a mischievous grin during his show, "But some things are real even if you can't see them, like weapons of mass destruction." \nFlopping down on the piano bench, Peter Schickele threw his tuxedo jacket tails over his shoulders and began to tickle the piano keys -- with his forehead. Then Schickele stopped the music just long enough to slap his head, wipe his nose, stick his tongue out, make an armpit noise and flip the audience the bird. Schickele said the added visual delights could be blamed on composer P.D.Q. Bach's "Dance of the Various Body Parts." \nRecreating the sounds of the non-existent P.D.Q. Bach left plenty of room for comedic elements. The show opened with the late Schickele being rushed on stage in a wheelchair by his "nurse," soprano Michèle Eaton. After being unceremoniously dumped on stage, Schickele dusted off his hospital gown and introduced himself to the audience. The supposed "professor of musical pathology" then cracked up the entire house with sophisticated humor that ranged from the high brow to below the belt.\nP.D.Q. Bach's "compositions" gave Schickele the creative license to play a variety of musical genres. Schickele employed comedic rounds, rewritten versions of songs that sounded suspiciously like "Heart and Soul" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," and ridiculous musical instruments like the "tromboon," a cross between the trombone and bassoon. Schickele's tenor, David Dusing, also sang in a hilarious language made up of English/German that P.D.Q. Bach supposedly used in his writing. \n"She sits on un green folding chair waiting for some green underwear," sang Dusing during one of P.D.Q Bach's unknown pieces titled "Gretchen Am Spincycle."\nAfter intermission, Schickele put away his hospital gown and hilarious professor persona to reemerge as himself -- a gifted composer. The audience was dealt "a serious relief," with an enchanting solo by Eaton. Her voice shocked the audience into reverent silence the same way tenor Dusing's comedic lyrics erupted the audience into giggles. \nFor the performance's finale, Schickele delighted the audience with what he called "a note of high culture," or Shakespeare's famous soliloquies reworked in Schickele style. Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" erupted through the auditorium with Schickele at the piano acting as the lounge jazz singer. Juliet's soliloquy sounded more like it belonged in the musical "Oklahoma" than the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet."\nAfter hearing the entire performance, it's not difficult to see why Schickele has composed for film, radio, television and the stage. According to Schickele's Web Site, the Grammy award-winning artist's works now total more than 100 different musical compositions written for various mediums. Schickele also has been parading P.D.Q. Bach's "works" since the 1950s. As always, practice makes perfect, because the antics of this master of imagination kept getting better and better.