Joe Frank Can’t Top Radio Act

Joe Frank’s radio performances of his wild and woolly stories are so mesmerizing that a lot of people wonder what he would be like on stage. He satisfied some of that curiosity in two performances Friday at Veterans Wadsworth Theater, backed musically by Brazzaville, occasionally accompanied by dancers from Dance Electric.

The presenter was KCRW-FM, the public radio station that was Frank’s home base until last year when he stopped doing the show--making these live performances even more urgent for his fans.

Given all this, Frank admonished the audience to “lower your expectations” shortly after he began, and sure enough, his radio show was a hard act to follow.

Seeing Frank, as opposed to simply listening to him, didn’t amount to much, at least for those who weren’t near the front of the large theater. Frank’s features weren’t easily made out in the generally murky light. He didn’t move around the stage. He even wore a long coat that concealed any signs of movement, as if he were trying to maintain his radio-bred invisibility.

The dance interludes, lighting effects and the sight of the constantly playing Brazzaville behind Frank did add some visual imagery, but these were marginal to the main event. Moving light patterns occasionally distracted rather than enhanced. However, the slow prowl of searchlights across the audience during Frank’s final rendition of “Is That All There Is?” (with original verses) did help draw the audience into the event, though not with perfect precision--some of the laughs here seemed poorly timed.

Not surprisingly, the sound quality of Frank’s readings wasn’t as good as it is on the radio, especially when he assumed the sound of a blues singer--the words were louder but also more garbled.

As on the radio, Frank’s usually unruffled delivery and the meticulous, litany-like cadences that pepper his stories were in comic juxtaposition to the free-floating anxieties he described, particularly in a tale about an awkward relationship between his first-person character and a female teaching colleague. His other extended stories were a yarn about an encounter with a woman who was pretending to be Jesus, and reminiscences of a high-living blues singer.