I've heard it said that there was this Australian fellow playing the Broadhurst recently who regularly had his audiences whipped up into quite a frenzy. I've also heard of a Liverpool quartet that could pack screaming fans into a sold out Shea Stadium. Now, I couldn't tell you if the decibel level was just as high at The Metropolitan Room last week when an American gal named Marilyn Maye was frequently honored with roaring ovations on the final night of her quickie engagement called Marilyn By Request, but I bet Messrs. Jackman, McCartney and Starr would be quite delighted to be still inspiring such boisterous affection as they were approaching their 84th birthdays.
There's nothing nostalgic about watching Marilyn Maye perform, which is a great part of what makes her shows so exciting. Sure, her repertoire consists mainly of American Songbook standards and she'll throw in a story about Ray Charles or Johnny Carson now and then, but perhaps it's because her warm and expressive voice is in such spectacular shape that she never lets your mind wander back to how good she used to sound. The emphasis is on the here when she time travels through Sondheim's survivalist anthem, "I'm Still Here," singing it with the relaxed satisfaction of a woman who won't have any regrets about anything that led up to where she is now.
And despite that lyric's proclamation that she should be camp by now, she can actually open her show by sashaying through the audience to Kool & The Gang's "Celebration" without a hint of silliness because she believes in the message of the song just as strongly as she does of her traditional encore, Jerry Herman's "It's Today." In between she sang for nearly two hours and you couldn't call one note of the evening excessive.
The theme of the three-night run was that audience members could request songs as they made their reservations, meaning Maye, music director/pianist Billy Stritch, drummer Ray Marchica and bassist Tom Hubbard had to put together a new set list for each performance. Most likely there was overlap when it came to classic Maye interpretations like her heartbreaking "Guess Who I Saw Tonight?" and her biggest "commercial" success, a three-year stint as spokes-singer for Lincoln Mercury, singing praises to their latest car models to the tune of "Step To The Rear." But this was a house full of people who were hip to all the latest Marilyn Maye selections, so there was even a request for Jerry Herman's "You I Like," the 11 o'clock polka from The Grand Tour that the canny vocalist flips into cool syncopation.
A more introspective moment late in the evening had Maye wondering aloud how much longer she could go on performing. When an enthused voice called out, "Forever!," the saloon singer turned just a tad serious about facing the realism of time, and how happy it makes her to be giving master classes, so that her knowledge and experience can be passed on to a new generation of vocalists.
But again, Marilyn Maye is all about the here and now. And right now I dare you to name a more exciting entertainer in all of Gotham.
Click here to follow Michael Dale on Twitter.
Click here for Michael Dale's Twitterized theatre reviews.
