Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway debut

THE man known as “The Boss” certainly knows how to work a room. Standing alone on stage in the Walter Kerr Theatre (capacity 939), dressed in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, Bruce Springsteen goes off-microphone early in his new Broadway show to confess something. “I’ve never held an honest job in my entire life,” he declares. “I’ve never done an honest day’s work. I’ve never worked 9 to 5.” Then he pauses a beat: “And yet that is all I have ever written about.” (Laughter.) “I have become absurdly successful writing about something of which I have absolutely no practical experience.” (More laughter.)

It is a nicely prepared line, well timed and well delivered. It would do fine in any of the stadium shows the rock star has played for decades. But Mr Springsteen’s showmanship here lies in the act of speaking directly to the room. He knows the fact that he can be heard, unamplified, is part of the magic. He is inviting his audience to lean in and listen as he tells and sings the story of his life.

That he does like a spoken-word poet. “Springsteen on Broadway” is partly an adaptation of “Born to Run”, his recent autobiography, partly a curated playlist of his most soulful work. For two hours he sprinkles magic dust—sentimental, sometimes dark, often funny recollections of his childhood, family, home town and career—in a way that gives structure and depth to both his stories and his songs.

He recalls walking into bars as a child, past the smell of “beer, booze and aftershave”, to peer up at his father through cigarette smoke and tell him: “Mom wants you to come home.” Mr Springsteen then starts into the song “My Father’s House”, but stops in the middle to recount a dream he had shortly after his father died, where he ends up watching himself perform awhile with his father. “For a moment we both watched the man on fire on stage,” he recalls. “I say, ‘Look dad, that guy on stage, that’s how I see you.’” When he resumes singing, the lyrics carry more power than when he wrote them.

He does a similar trick with “Born in the USA”, which he pointedly reminds the audience was meant as a protest song. He sings it after talking about friends he lost in the Vietnam war, and after telling how he and two of his friends managed not to get drafted, although their numbers were called. “I sometimes wonder who went in my place, because somebody did.” The rendition that follows, played on acoustic guitar, and sung without any enthusiasm for the song’s famous title chorus, is true to its crushingly downbeat verses. It feels nothing like the rock anthem that he and the E Street Band released in 1984. This is a 68-year-old man considering his mortality, and shaping his legacy.

The man is helped by the staging and lighting. Heather Wolensky sets him in a spare brick warehouse and Natasha Katz subtly alternates the spotlighting, from dark colours to soft yellows, to match the mood. Mr Springsteen is perhaps most effective, though, when he puts aside the microphone, knowing the audience would hang on his every word. It is worth hearing what he has to say.