Review: Jill Kargman is the Quintessential New Yorker in her Café Carlyle Debut STAIRWAY TO CABARET

Jill Kargman is a pleasant singer. Her voice is lovely, in fact, but that is not why audiences joined her inside the legendary Café Carlyle for a string of sold-out performances which began on January 17.

No, patrons made their way to the Upper East Side venue on this damp winter evening to hear Kargman's hilarious and often cringe-inducing war stories from her New York City upbringing, through her entrance into show business and Manhattan motherhood. Kargman, whose bawdy humor and unapologetic crudeness undoubtedly had some in the room blushing into their cocktails (her euphemism for the mouth, in particular, is a tickler) saliently strung the show together with influential songs from her past which she deemed "wildly sexist," and which she was "re-appropriating as a 42-year-old Jewish female."

Those songs included Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee and the softer "Here I Go Again" by David Coverdale and Bernie Marsden. With musical direction and piano supplied by Marco Paguia, I reiterate the pleasantness of the evening's tunes, but the performance was (wisely) much more akin to standup with musical interludes, thanks in large part to direction from Trip Cullman.

Kargman, who is now best known for creating the Bravo series "Odd Mom Out," on which she also stars, grew up mere blocks away from the Carlyle, though, like her fictional television counterpart, was on the less wealthy side of the obscenely wealthy. You would be justified in crying "poor not-as-rich-as-the-richest lady." However, you would also surely not be surprised to hear that in this particular room, there were no such gripes.

Kargman's stories were comprised of the only-in-New-York circumstances which can often transcend class and wealth, in the same way that the city as a whole so often does. Her standout tale, for example, was that of her youth when her family agreed to house international dance students without a place to live. Kargman recalled one wily young woman who, upon being caught by Kargman's parents with an unknown man in her room, was urged not to bring anyone into the apartment that they didn't know. They arrived home a short time later, then, only to find their building's doorman keeping the dancer company. "You said to bring home only people we knew," was the effect of the dancer's retort. Was it a story to which the masses could relate? Perhaps not, but it offered a unique glimpse into the artist whom patrons had come out to see, which is the goal of all cabaret performers (or, it should be, anyway).

Since the election, New Yorkers have been told incessantly of "the bubble" in which we reside. Kargman's show, with its Manhattan-centricity prominently at its core, certainly did little to dispel such a notion, but when the bubble is filled with humor and empathy and an embrace of all walks of life, remind me again why there's a need to pop it?

To post a comment, you must register and login.