Review: The Other Side
The GableStage’s latest production is a musical treat
By Tina Wingate / Photos by Magnus Stark
I can tell you the moment when Both Sides Now: The Music and Lives of Joni Mitchel and Leonard Cohen begins to enchant the audience. It is the moment the play begins, when Danielle Wertz becomes Joni Mitchell and starts to sing, “A Case of You.” Her exquisite voice is mesmerizing, beginning the evening’s journey into the music and lives of singer-songwriters Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.


The GableStage’s second production of the season is unusual as theater goes. It is less a play than a meditation, gently exploring the musical evolution of two pop culture icons of the 1970s and late 1960s. The narrative, as much as there is, interweaves the lives of Mitchell and Cohen – who had a brief affair after meeting at the Newport Folk Festival – with the lives of performers Wertz and co-star Robbie Schaefer. It is an easy weave, lightly humorous and above all charming, with anecdotal snippets intertwined between expertly performed ballads.
For the Boomers in the audience, this is a perfect play, a congenial voyage to the past. Songs they knew decades ago are reborn in a live performance, each serving as a kind of time trigger. Equally enrapturing are the less familiar songs, coming across as fresh and new.
Actors and authors (and musicians) Wertz (a graduate of UM’s Frost School of Music) and Schaefer have been performing Both Sides Now for a couple of years and are entirely comfortable with their material. That sense of being at ease is part of the magic. You feel as though you either have an exceptionally good seat at a small folk music concert, or that you are guests in someone’s living room. Either way the feeling is one of intimacy.

Both Sides Now is an unexpected oasis of music and witty conversation, a truly feel-good evening where everyone leaves with a smile on their face. Wertz and Schaefer are masters of their craft and heartfelt in their appreciation of the emotional power of music.
Both Sides Now is an offbeat choice by Gablestate producing artistic director Bari Newport – after all, who waits around for a play about Leonard Cohen? – but one that is right on target with her Gables audience. Both Sides Now is a sweet love letter from a bygone world that reminds us how personal music can be, and how much it can touch us. And Kudos to GableStage sound engineer Hector Martinez; without superb acoustics Both Sides Now would fall flat. Instead, it
soars.
Both Sides Now
Dec.13 to Jan. 5 at GableStage
Tues. to Sat. at 7:30 pm; Sat. & Sun. at 2 pm
Special Holiday performance Dec. 24, 2 pm
1200 Anastasia Ave. (at the Biltmore Hotel)
For tickets: Gablestage.org or 305-445-1119
Read our other review of “King James” to learn more about this standout production.