Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me: Humility Takes A Holiday

He's one of the funniest men working on Broadway today and he's never had a better vehicle for showing New York theatre audiences his many talents. He delivers comic zingers with pinpoint timing, hilariously impersonates celebrities, and sings and dances with a flashy vaudevillian flair.

But enough about Brooks Ashmanskas…

The great comedy artists who were welcomed into America's living rooms week after week (Jack Benny, Sid Caesar and Carol Burnett, to name a few) were smart enough to surround themselves with a terrific crew of supporting players. They knew that every laugh earned by the likes of Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Imogene Coca and Tim Conway made the star look even better. In his new Broadway variety show, Fame Becomes Me, Martin Short proves himself to be a smart guy. Director/lyricist Scott Wittman, writers Short and Daniel Goldfarb (with additional material by Alan Zweibel) and composer/lyricist/arranger Marc Shaiman model the evening after the television musical sketch comedy shows that sadly went out of fashion years after making Broadway's musical comedy revues obsolete. (Circle of life, ya know).

Fame Becomes Me is a giddy, manic carnival ride where a star who mocks himself by his mere presence graciously shares the stage with a rowdy team of clowns who sing, dance, impersonate and spoof their way through 90 minutes of fast, loud and funny. Most of it works, a bit of it doesn't, but the show barrels through at such a tornado pace you can lose your breath just watching the thing.

"Another curtain comes up on a one-man show / Another chance for an ego to say 'hello,'" sing Ashmanskas, Shaiman, Mary Birdsong, Nicole Parker and Capathia Jenkins. (Yes, I know. I've already made it clear that Fame Becomes Me isn't a one-man show. Stop thinking so much.) And shortly after the company ponders whose vagina will speak in monologues this time, our star begins pleading (in song), "Love me, even more than I love myself." This is familiar territory for Short, who is at his funniest when indulging in the great showbiz tradition of shamelessness.

With a carefully crafted elfish glint, he reminds the audience how much their approval means to him. "The only difference between you people and 100% pharmaceutical morphine is that morphine doesn't judge."

Marc Shaiman, a gleefully animated cherub of a man following in the tradition of loveable oddball second bananas like Joey Faye and Jerry Colona, plays piano onstage while Charlie Alterman conducts the orchestra below, as the company performs a loosely connected string of songs and sketches that somehow add up to Martin Short's life story.

If the hospital scene where our infant hero sings of his obsession with "big titties" is a bit too obvious, it's soon followed by cleverer stuff. In a bit where young Short is auditioning for Broadway shows, Ashmanskas is a blast as a long-legged Tommy Tune and a chain-smoking Bob Fosse. In fact, much of the material is geared toward a theatre audience with digs on Broadway celebs ("As Mandy Patinkin said of one-man shows, 'Always leave the audience wanting less.'"), songs that parody Stephens Sondheim and Schwartz and one quick bit (I'm not sure it's intentional) that seems to spoof one of the more legendarily dreadful scenes in Suzanne Somers' The Blonde in the Thunderbird.

We also get visits by two of Short's popular characters, songwriter Irving Cohen (who penned the Sophie Tucker classic, "You Got It In There, Now You Get It Out") and television interviewer Jiminy Glick. Though guest celebrities have been brought in from the audience for some give and take with Glick, the night I attended a regular Joe was taken on stage for an interview that got some good-natured laughs without embarrassing the guy.

Playing numerous characters, the cast charges on and off assorted wacky locales provided by set designer Scott Pask while flying in and out of Jess Goldstein's clever costumes. Two of the ladies are featured in a parade of celebrity impersonations. Early on, Birdsong channels Judy Garland as "a farmer's daughter who's looking for the salesman that got away" and then plays a frantic Joan Rivers who interviews Parker as Ellen DeGeneres, Celine Dion and Britney Spears in stunningly quick changes of costumes and characters. (Not to mention great wig work by Charles LaPointe).

In a slyly satirical move, Jenkins, who is a large-sized black woman with a belty voice, has little to do throughout the evening until called on to bring the house down belting out a number about how every Broadway musical needs a big black woman to stop the show. And while the song is great fun and Jenkins pulls it off beautifully, it's also a vicious jab at the stereotyping that limits the casting opportunities for women of her size and color.

But that's as socially conscious as Fame Becomes Me gets. This is strictly sit-back-and-have-fun stuff, and it's one helluva good time.

Photos by Paul Kolnik: Top: Nicole Parker, Martin Short, Mary Birdsong
Center: Nicole Parker, Mary Birdsong, Brooks Ashmanskas and Martin Short
Bottom: Capathia Jenkins, Mary Birdsong, Marc Shaiman and Nicole Parker