Extravagant Eclectic

It might have been a sports event, a church sermon, an opera, a musical comedy. It was, in fact, all of those things. Produced at Manhattan's Judson Memorial Church, A Look at the Fifties comprised an entrancing hodgepodge of tap dancing, singing, recitations and thunderous chorales providing running commentary on, of all things, an actual basketball game. It won rave reviews, packed the church for three weekends recently--then vanished. So it goes with the work of the Rev. Al Carmines, who wrote the show and is fast emerging as one of New York's finest composers of theater music. Because Carmines is also the practicing minister at Judson Memorial, most of his productions have to be sandwiched between other functions at the church.

Unsmirched Wilde. One day last week, for example, Carmines zipped uptown to Manhattan's Town Hall for a recital of songs from some of the 58 shows he has written since 1961. Looking like a saintly, unsmirched Oscar Wilde, he sang in a brassy baritone, played some fleet-fingered piano, and filled the hall with resounding delight.

Carmines' music is extravagantly eclectic. He writes songs about war, Joan of Arc, peace, Gertrude Stein, pornography, Jesus Christ and W.C. Fields, all in a stylistic gamut that runs from Monteverdi to Montenegro. His favorite form is an extension of the turn-of-the-century ballad, on which he imposes anything that catches his fancy: tangos, hillbilly hymns, blues, echoes, jazz, gospel shouts, Puccini pastiches.

The son of a harmonica-playing sea captain, Carmines was born 35 years ago in Hampton, Va. Until age 17, he I planned to become a concert pianist, Then he took stock of his keyboard talents and decided on the ministry instead. "But in college at Swarthmore," he says, "I became an atheist. Later on I realized that you don't have to be a fanatic to believe in God, so I grew out of that." After graduating from Union Theological Seminary, he went to Judson Memorial and was assigned to form a church theatrical group. Carmines accepted on two conditions: no censorship and no religious dramas. "God doesn't disappear when you don't talk about him," he explained.

When Carmines began writing his own shows, a few (Peace, In Circles, Promenade) were picked up for commercial runs in off-Broadway theaters, and Carmines won four Obie awards --off-Broadway's equivalent to the Oscar. Now he is turning increasingly to performing. Last January he had a successful stint as pianist-singer in Manhattan's Downstairs at the Upstairs. Carmines insists, though, that he is not tempted to leave the church for full-time show biz. "The two great doctrines of Christianity are salvation and creation," he says. "There has been too much concern with the first. I want to do something about the second."

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