Faithfull Following

THE BLACK RIDERGALLOPS WEST TO SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco theater audiences will this month witness a collaboration between three individualist icons who have in common one enviable quality: dignified bohemian maturity. The American Conservatory Theater's revival of the 1990 musical The Black Rider reunites Tom Waits, the show's brilliant and reclusive composer, with Robert Wilson, the decade-straddling visionary who directed the original. Wilson employs a stark and jarring German Expressionist aesthetic to frame The Black Rider, a cautionary fable with roots in the dark and loamy folklore of the Fatherland. Since the story was adapted for the stage by William S. Burroughs, America's late laureate of the opiated underground, the new leading lady is of perfect provenance: Marianne Faithfull, smoke-cured rock chanteuse and latter-day Burroughs friend. Faithfull, now 57, first met the writer at some decadent salon during her swinging London teens, but was too shy to speak. "Plus, I don't think William was all that interested in little gahls," drawls Faithfull, fresh from The Black Rider's lauded run in London. The play tells—through Tom Waits's Weimar-evocative songs—the story of a lovelorn clerk who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for some magic bullets. Satan is represented by the character Peg Leg, played by Faithfull, who quickly shoots down the suggestion that portraying ultimate evil might allow her to indulge in some scenery-chewing fun. "I try not to indulge myself," says Faithfull. "It's much cleverer to play it cool."

STEVEN DALY