A Sunday matiné e musical puppet show for all ages at Che’s Lounge will feature musical monkeys who love to dance and play, with their friends Bella and Arakataka’s Little Band. Are You Looking for Bananas? is the name of this happy play about a musical land where musician monkeys live and enjoy life.
The play and its songs are written by Bella and they are performed live in both English and Portuguese by Bella and Carol Loud, a music teacher for children.
During the day Che’s Lounge is a quiet coffee shop with second-hand sofas and deep, sometimes springless armchairs situated at the back of an alley off Main street Vineyard Haven. In the summer months some of this furniture is dragged out under a canopy where a few regulars nurse lattes.
But by night it is one of the Island’s principle music venues.
In the age of electronic entertainment, how delightful to see a roomful of children wrapped in the spell — not of a movie, video game or Web site — but an old-fashioned puppet show. Che’s Lounge in Vineyard Haven played host Sunday, Feb. 15 (the second of three consecutive Sundays scheduled) to a local puppet troupe performing a Brazilian folktale — Toad and the Party in the Sky — to a packed house. Children in the audience, ranging in age from one to ten, were clearly captivated, laughing aloud and even singing along with the characters.
The musical puppet show The Hole Without A Bottom (O Buraco Sem Fundo) premieres at Che’s Lounge on Sunday, April 5, and will continue every Sunday in April at 11:30 a.m.
Featuring Island performer Bella, The Hole Without A Bottom is an original play adapted from an original story, performed in English and Portuguese. The suggested donation is $5.
The crowd at Che’s Lounge sang along Saturday night, as brothers Dave and Rob Myers brought a cornucopia of music and nostalgia to the underground coffee shop in the alley off Main street in Vineyard Haven.
Many of the Island’s seasoned musicians showed up at Che’s; for them, it was a step back to the 1990s and a time when the Island was home to a number of vibrant live bands that played regularly enough that audiences became fans, buying locally-produced albums and memorizing lyrics.
