Last night, Garrison Keillor performed at the Red Butte Amphitheatre as part of his final tour before he retires from his show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” for good. The air was warm as latecomers struggled to find even a small patch of grass to sit on within the remarkably crowded amphitheatre.
If you grew up listening to the National Public Radio station, you may have heard Keillor’s Saturday night shows; you may have even listened without ever knowing the name of the guy whose voice was coming through the speakers. When I attended the performance, I was surprised to discover that this had been the case for me, and that while the name ‘Garrison Keillor’ did not ring any bells, his character ‘Guy Noir, Private Eye,’ with his dry humor, deep voice, and strange cases definitely did. I had never bothered to picture the face behind that voice, so seeing Keillor’s 73-year-old figure as he entered the amphitheatre doing his version of singing — which hit all the right notes but did not carry them for long — was rather strange.
From what I remember of those Saturday nights tuning into NPR, Keillor’s shows were limited versions of variety shows; they featured mainly folk songs with only a few different genres of music mixed in, jokes set to simple musical tunes, and skits such as Keillor’s go-to Private Guy Noir. The performance last night was no different. I am not quite sure what I expected; maybe a little more movement on stage, a quicker pace to the jokes, something to grab my attention and keep it from wandering. While there were moments when I laughed out loud, they were few and interspersed with long gaps in which Keillor pushed jokes far past their breaking points while remaining relatively motionless throughout. The only figure on the stage who provided any sort of visual entertainment was the man in charge of sound effects, whose antics were also the most reliable at producing laughter.
After two hours, I was pretty tired of the performance — though there were bits I found quite enjoyable. However, given the fact that the audience was largely composed of people my parents’ age and older, I am fairly certain I was not among the target audience to begin with. Keillor’s jokes set to music and his skits that fell flat for me seemed to do the opposite for those around me who had been listening to his shows for 41 years. Maybe, for last night’s audience, Keillor represented more than a late-night variety show; maybe his performance spoke to them in ways we, as young adults, will only relate to a few decades from now when icons of today either figuratively or literally play their last songs.