WHO LOVES YOU, BABY? Extends at the Huron Club at SoHo Playhouse

It was a highlight of the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival, and for the past three months Who Loves You, Baby? has thrilled packed audiences at The Huron Club at The SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam Street).  The show was originally slated to close on December 30, but due to popular demand, Tom DiMenna will resume his nightly resurrections of bald-headed sex symbol Telly Savalas three times a week beginning January 18 and carrying on through April 2012.

The show, written by New York’s own Hunter Nelson, has had everyone from hipsters to hip-replacements rolling in the aisles.  Under the direction ofTaylor Negron, young comic chameleon Tom DiMenna expertly channels the unmistakable chutzpah of long-dead 70’s Hollywood tough guy Telly Savalas.  That’s right: The no-nonsense Greek-American actor best known as TV’s Lt. Theo Kojak has taken flesh once again -- and he sings, too! Accompanied by virtuosic pianist Alex Leonard, and joined by Henry Kaiser as Telly’s second-banana brother George (part of a “package deal” resurrection), DiMenna creates a unique and surreal atmosphere of nightclub comedy and supernatural stagecraft, all couched in the uncontestable class and cool of a sexier (and somewhat sweatier) time gone by. 

Who Loves You, Baby? turns the conventions of traditional cabaret to its own purposes, diagnosing and – before your very eyes –curing this generation’s all-around cultural incontinence, forcibly remedying our modern world’s ever-weakening grasp on romance and masculine sexual identity.  Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Who Loves You, Baby?  has received cheers from all over: “You will not see a funnier play than Who Loves You, Baby?! As Savalas, Tom DiMenna is hilarious and cool like Telly.” -- Nytheater.com; “Who Loves You, Baby? is hilarious.  Tom DiMenna is front and center as a dead ringer for the now-dead Savalas. It’s a brilliantly breezily bombastic performance that induces giggles galore for its gumption and straight-faced pontification.” -- Nitelife Exchange; “I laughed my way from the beginning right through the end.” -- LA Fringe Review; “Tom DiMenna plays the hairless icon with comedic grace… [the show is] simultaneously ridiculous and refreshing.” -- LA Theatre Review

Audiences have been brought to tears by the string of genuine laughs that DiMenna serves up with such fresh and unexpected timing.  And yet beneath the surface of Who Loves You, Baby? Tom as Telly subversively grapples with darker aspects of the human condition: mortality, legacy, love, life, and death.  “A man should know his own personal darkness,” he warns.  “That’s where the art lives.  It’s where Beethoven’s 5th comes from.  It’s where Guernica comes from.  And you bet your ass it’s where ‘Kojak’ comes from!” The show serves as a touching and funny tribute to the life and songs of Savalas, while delivering an earnest message to today’s hipsters not to sacrifice romance for cheap and easy thrills.  And to powder their feet.

Come witness this uproarious and fundamentally indescribable lounge act from the world beyond, and see for yourself why the world needs Telly now more than ever!