Suzanne Vega channels a soul troubled in new exhibit

 Artists who get out of their comfort zone to turn to offshore in a new direction are to be applauded. And the folk-pop singer Suzanne Vega left permanently his comfort zone, although a bit tentatively, in "Carson McCullers Talks About Love."

An unusual mixture of words spoken and Sung - not quite a musical, but not a cabaret show or concert, or - the piece is clearly a labor of love for Vega, known for his hits of the 1980s "Of Tom Diner" and "luka." (If you are not quite put the latter, the words "I live on the second floor" could bring back for you.)

And "Carson McCullers," which opened Thursday at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, is a project on which she worked, somehow, for years. At age 17, she says in the beginning, she spied a book in the library, a biography of a famous writer. "The face attracts me in", she noted. He was the face "of an old wise child."

Indeed, the young woman on the cover, the southern writer Carson McCullers, involves some physical resemblance to a younger Vega, particularly with his blunt-cut bangs. "I could be this woman," Vega was thought at the time.

The appeal of the life of McCullers to a curious teenager intellectually is not difficult to imagine.

The author has published "the heart is a lonely Hunter" in 1940 at the age of 23. The best selling novel would be considered among the best in the 20th century.

And it catapulted McCullers in a world of celebrity. We learn that she attended to people such as W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. She had affairs with men and women. She also had a trauma: the suicide of her husband, do not talk about depression, alcoholism and various physical ailments. A series of strokes caused his left side to be paralyzed while she was still in his 30 years, and she died at 50.

In short, McCullers had the kind of life exciting and frightening mesmerizingly which must have really captivated young Vega, who wrote a song on his back then: "iron butterfly." The song is among more than a dozen in this new series; they have co-written with composer "Spring Awakening" Duncan Sheik.

The room has all the elements of a fascinating evening, but at a recent performance, they were yet to gel. Vega is always also find his foot as an actor, and she seemed a little lost at times. As she noted, she put the bar very high in its first actress output.

Yet Vega has done with the eccentric charm that made him famous as a singer, and the songs are the best element here, with a confidence that is less evident in some of the dialogue. (Joe Iconis accompanies his piano and a little dialogue;) (Played Andy stack guitar and other instruments).

In "New York is my Destination" McCullers of the big city dreams: "I will be lunch at Algonquin, Swing by the Plaza, waltz on in...". New York is made for bigger things, like me. "Other songs have a darker hue. In the "song of Annemarie," she sings of an desperate and painful love for a woman (a socialite addicted to morphine) she met during her marriage.

And in the amusing "Harper Lee," she sings of his pure jealousy of the author "Of Kill a Mockingbird": "it appears always receive more that it deserves..." I would like to kill more than this mocking bird. ?

What are the most compelling moments of 'carson mccullers', and they are a little discombobulated evening a satisfying nonetheless.

"Carson McCullers Talks About Love," directed by Kay Matschullat, runs through June 4.