SCHNEIDER TURNS BACK TO THE ‘20S

When the house lights of the Art Deco Cinegrill at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel dim tonight, Helen Schneider will step back into 1929 as Lily Walker, a nightclub singer in her late 20s who will reminisce about her unhappy love affair with a glamorous New York bootlegger.

After 90 minutes or so of singing the era’s pop and blues songs, delivering monologues and holding one-sided conversations about Frankie, Schneider will step out of “A Flapper’s Folly” and return to the present.

At present, the Brooklyn-born singer can look back on a career whose tangents have included her being successful as a blues singer, an actress, a middle-of-the-road artist, and the “Rock and Roll Gypsy” in Germany, where she sold millions of the eight records she made with her band, the Kick.

“I used to rationalize everything I did,” Schneider said. “I believed in every era I was involved in, even though now I realize I’ve negated five different lives. But at the time it was very real.”

The current reality is that of cabaret singer in a one-woman show that was conceived less than a year ago and that has already had critical and popular success in New York.

“I’ve always had a fascination with the ‘20s,” she said, adding that the era has “so many parallels to today--women’s lib, the modern age, making it as an individual rather than belonging to someone.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I wanted to do a show in New York. I needed to do something legitimate, but that was unusual and original. I felt ill equipped to write it.”

To write the show, Schneider was introduced to Tina Landau, a recent graduate of the Yale Drama School. The two hit it off right away in what began as an idea for a stage production with words and music developed into a one-woman cabaret show with accompaniment provided by solo piano, played by John McMahon.

“But it is theater,” she reminded.

The music, however, is what takes precedence for Schneider, who began her singing career as a blues artist.

Though her career would take her far from the music of Muddy Waters and deliver to her German audiences yearning for English-sung punk rock, Schneider’s devotion to the blues is what has helped characterize the heroine of “A Flapper’s Folly” (at the Cinegrill through Oct. 30.)

“I took a black route for Lily,” Schneider said, adding that she doesn’t “stylize” the songs.

“The songs feel as though they were written for the piece itself,” Schneider continued. “The lyric content is what matters.”

While that is certainly not a surprising attitude from a singer, it may be from either an actress or instrumentalist.

Schneider’s earliest introductions to music came via her studying to be a classical pianist.

“That’s what I grew up on and Chopin is still my man,” Schneider said, though she admitted to being a “station jumper” when it comes to her current radio listening habits. “I like it all.”

Schneider considers her career to be a series of “left hand turns” and doesn’t know what the future might hold for her. “I like left hand turns” she said. “They keep me young.”