Review - Mark Nadler and KT Sullivan in A Swell Party: RSVP Cole Porter

"We are not here to tell the life story of Cole Porter," Mark Nadler advised the Town Hall audience last Monday night. "There are two excessively mediocre films for that.

Indeed, if there was any educational value A Swell Party: RSVP Cole Porter, Nadler and K.T. Sullivan's return engagement of their dynamite Algonquin Oak Room tribute playing a one-nighter on what would be the golden child of Peru, Indiana's 117th birthday, it was in how to find unexpected shadings in songs we've known and loved forever.

Though they both have earned acclaim for their solo careers, the frequent pairing of Mark Nadler and K.T. Sullivan is one of those inexplicable combustions of stage chemistry that works beyond any conventional reason. How does a wildly frenetic pianist with a whirlwind wit perfumed with Tin Pan Alley moxie (imagine if Groucho was the piano-playing Marx) mix with the refined airy soprano southern belle of high-haired elegance? The answer probably lies in the admirably complex and unpredictable arrangements by Nadler, which takes advantage of their contrasting styles to comedic effect in duets like "Let's Do It" and "Well, Did You Evah!," and creates sublime moments of drama as when Nadler's torchy intense "You Don't Know Paree" is counter-melodied with Sullivan's delicately airy "After You, Who?"

Though not afraid to tickle the borders of questionable taste ("Kate The Great," Porter's resume of the sexual appetites of Catherine of Russia, ended with Nadler fiercely galloping the familiar strains of Rossini's overture to William Tell followed by Sullivan's satisfied little whinny.) their easy-going playfulness was balanced by moments like Sullivan's still and regal "I've Got You Under My Skin" and her pairing of a dulcet "So In Love" with a throaty "Get Out Of Town."

Nadler treated Porter's lyrical repetition in "You've Got That Thing" as a troubled search for the right word to describe a lover's appeal, gradually resigning himself to celebrate the indescribably nature of attraction. His piano playing hit a frenzied zenith with a jaw-dropping solo of "Too Darn Hot."

With Yasushi Nakamura on bass and Loren Schoenberg frequently featured in creamy sax solos, along with celebs such as Tammy Grimes, Sondra Lee and Barbara Brussell seated at on-stage cocktail tables, Nadler and Sullivan honored one of Broadway's most stylish artists in exquisite form.