Ricky Pope - Page 5

Kelli O'Hara has one of the most beautiful voices on Broadway today, probably ever. Her musicianship is unparalleled. She is a great actress without being fussy about it. For all her star power, she still seems like the girl next door. She brings a typhoon of passion to everything she does, inviting her audience to share in that deep well of emotion. You leave any performance by Kelli O’Hara feeling more hopeful, more alive, more human.

A gentle wish for peace and an acknowledgment of the beauty all around us. Those were the last words to flow out of the pen of Oscar Hammerstein II. Born into a legendary theatrical family, his career spanned over 40 years on Broadway and he worked with a myriad of partners, notably Sigmund Romberg and Jerome Kern. But it is his groundbreaking partnership with Richard Rodgers that produced the work he will forever be remembered for. The partnership won him 8 Tony awards and two Oscars for best song. A playwright and lyricist, he created 5 works that are still staples of regional and community theatres around the world and 4 lesser performed works that pushed boundaries and are the basis of the musical play that still is a model for modern theatre writers. In terms of theatrical giants, they don't come much bigger than Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Broadway dreams die hard. In her new show THIS BROAD’S WAY,  which opened last evening at Pangea, she gets to sing all the Broadway tunes she ever wanted to sing, perform all the roles she would never be cast in, and do it all her own way. The songs are completely out of context and applied to her own experiences. She infuses each tune with her own wry wit and her lovely and warm jazz stylings. She is one part chanteuse, one part monologuist, one part den mother, and one part suggestive vixen. And she is 100 percent fun. Her show is a treasure trove of swinging tunes and she has gathered a smoking trio of musicians in drummer, David Silliman, bassists Skip Ward and her longtime partner in art, musical director Gregory Toroian.

Christine Andreas' show, AND SO IT GOES, which opened at 54 Below last evening, doesn’t contain even a whiff of politics. But it focuses on the disjointedness the past decade or so has created in all our souls and holds up art and music as a way out of some of the chaotic noise that is making us lesser humans. It is a celebration of our collective humanity and an embrace of some of our best qualities as a species: kindness, tenderness, compassion, and love. That’s a lot to pack into a 70 minute cabaret evening. But Christine Andreas is no ordinary cabaret performer. In addition to her prodigious gifts as a singer and actress, she has always used her keen mind to focus on the bigger questions. She set out constructing this show as a way to cheer herself up. But what evolved is much more. It is a journey into the darkness and out again.

Tony Yazbeck's self-titled show is a celebration of motion. And make no mistake, dance is Tony Yazbeck’s native language. His entire demeanor alters when he begins to tap. His face lights up and his entire being exudes joy. If reincarnation exists, I want to come back with the ability to move as gracefully as Tony Yazbeck.

Haley Swindal (Chicago, Jekyll & Hyde, White Christmas) is a performer in the old sense, the kind who would have been right at home in the age of television variety shows. Her engaging personality is big, but not intimidating. She commands attention without being consciously flashy about it. She has what used to be called in the old days “stage presence.” Before the pandemic, she impressed Broadway audiences as one of the youngest women to play Matron Mama Morton in Chicago. She definitely has some of the swagger and chutzpah of that “Countess of the Clink.” But underneath it lies a sensitive, nurturing, sexy woman who is completely comfortable downstage center. In short, Haley Swindal is the life of the party.

There are some people who just have a passion for living. Passion is a word that applies to everything Christine Andreas touches. She has been bewitching Broadway audiences since she first appeared as the wicked maid Nancy in Angel Street. Her turns in much-heralded revivals of My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, and On Your Toes made her Broadway's ingenue of choice and earned her two Tony nominations. She also wowed Broadway audiences in The Scarlet Pimpernel and the 2010 revival of La Cage aux Folles. She conquered the West End in The Fields of Ambrosia, written by her husband and collaborator, Martin Sylvestri.

The joy and terror of doing cabaret entertainment is that it is amazingly confessional. There are no characters to hide behind. Only music, a performer, and his experiences. The vulnerability is exponentially compounded when the show you set out to do tells the story of your life. It is an extremely courageous thing to do. That is the task that Mark Corpron sets for himself in his show MOVING ON: SONGS OF JOURNEY, which opened last night at Don’t Tell Mama. The show sets out to explore not the destinations we arrive at in life, but rather the journeys that happen in between those destinations. It focuses on a soul with a permanent case of wanderlust and the loneliness that often accompanies such globe-trotting adventures.

Andy and Orfeh have been making music together for 20 years. And from Saturday Night Fever to Legally Blonde to Pretty Woman and several other shows they co-starred in, they have reigned as Broadway’s hippest married couple. It’s pretty unfair for two people to be so attractive, so talented, so charismatic, so successful, and so in love. Yet it’s impossible to resent their many gifts because they are so willing to share them and they make it all look like such great fun.

For 20 years, Orfeh and Andy Karl have been making beautiful music together. But no need to take my word for it. You can check it out for yourself this week when they return to Feinstein’s 54 Below with their show LEGALLY BOUND. It is an encore presentation of the show they did in 2017 that’s been rethought for the post-lockdown world. The title is, of course, a play on words referring to Legally Blonde, one of several Broadway shows Andy and Orfeh have co-starred in.

Diana Huey is a dynamic singer of power tunes: power ballads, power rock, and power pop songs. The surprise though is that she is equally adept at the introspective monologue and the quirky character song. She has a wry sense of humor which is most often aimed at herself. And most importantly, Diana Huey has heart, lots and lots of heart. Most of her stories dealt with finding your own empowerment through kindness to others. She feels this duty especially when it comes to children. She had wonderful stories about the young girls who came to the stage door to meet her when she played Ariel in The Little Mermaid on tour. Her platform as an Asian woman playing a Disney princess has made her a powerful advocate for these young girls. It is a job she takes very seriously.

The wonderful, magical part of MOSTLY MARLENE is that Kim David Smith plays none of it for camp. He winks at the audience, to be sure, but the evening is an honest and loving tribute to Marlene, the world she inhabited, and the fans who adored her. He captures her signature style: the languid delivery, the fluid gestures, the almost predatory sexuality, and those breathtaking moments when she became so still and internal it was a little spooky. None of it feels natural, and that’s precisely the point. Marlene Dietrich always let the audience in on the fact that they weren’t watching reality, they were watching an inspired creation. Kim David Smith is inspired, indeed.

The one constant in all Sierra Boggess' roles is a heavenly voice that sounds so effortless it hides the stunning technique that lies beneath. She has a lightness of tone that is completely conversational in every register and diction that is enviable. But beyond all these technical gifts, Boggess is masterful at living inside any given lyric without imposing anything on it. She just lets the words do the work. In that, she is a worthy successor to Barbara Cook.

Birdland, the world-famous jazz club, features two of these latter-day vaudeville offshoots. Jim Caruso's Cast Party has been a staple of Birdland for years, serving as Broadway's open mic experience. But every Tuesday evening, Susie Mosher presides over a somewhat more curated and far more ribald variety show in Birdland's downstairs theatre. THE LINEUP is not an open mic. Mosher puts together its guests each week. They are from every echelon of show business, from Tony winners to new up-and-coming artists. They often have nothing in common except for a wild amount of talent. Susie Mosher serves as the host of the evening. She is a combination of den mother, improv artist, and Tasmanian devil. Her wit is faster than lightning and she can turn on a dime into a fantastic chanteuse. I was lucky enough to catch the latest edition of THE LINEUP this evening.

It’s a very rare thing for 54 Below to present an evening of strictly instrumental music. But violinist Rachel Handman and oboist Keve Wilson are not ordinary musicians. They have been friends since childhood, growing up in the same neighborhood upstate. Handman’s mother was Keve Wilson’s piano teacher. They’ve been together ever since, occasionally even sharing a Broadway pit. At the time of the shutdown, Handman was playing West Side Story and Wilson was playing Company. This is the fourth time they’ve graced the stage of 54 Below. However, this time their band has expanded. Together with guitarist Hidayat Honari, bassist Marc Schmied, and drummer Damien Bassman, Handman and Wilson delighted a rapt audience.

Tonight, in their debut show at Don’t Tell Mama, Quentin Harris and Bryce Edwards added their own names to the list of performing teams who use opposition to their advantage. They bill themselves simply as MR. HARRIS AND MR. EDWARDS. If this sounds like a throwback to vaudeville days, it’s not entirely an accident. Harris and Edwards owe much to those old-time show business acts and most of their musical material is drawn from the Great American Songbook and from jazz standards. Quentin Harris knows a great deal about jazz and plays piano in the style of Oscar Peterson and many of the other jazz greats. Bryce Harris is a charmingly off-kilter one-man band, who plays ukulele, banjo, and the world’s most cumbersome looking kazoo. His style is bombastic and more than a little Jolson-esque. Both men are young, still in school, in fact, and so their show is a little rough around the edges as they find their footing. But they have the bones of a really interesting and unique act.

Adam Gwon has very devoted fans. His songs have been recorded by Audra Macdonald and Liz Callaway, among others, and are frequently heard performed in cabaret shows by hundreds of artists. But for all of the acclaim Gwon has received over the past decade or so, he has yet to write the show that will be his big breakthrough on Broadway. Like early Sondheim, his work is very individual and very unexpected. The era of Adam Gwon is on the way, make no mistake about it. No further proof is required than the showcase of his work that graced the stage of Feinstein’s 54 Below this weekend. Adam Gwon is the voice of his generation.

I’m happy to report that SUMMERTIME SWING! is perfectly on-brand. Mr. Feinstein delivers some finely crafted gems from the Great American Songbook with his trademark energy and showmanship. I have seen Feinstein mostly in larger venues, and so the surprising element in this show was to see how intimately he engaged his audience in the cozier quarters of 54 Below. It was truly like being invited into his home. He had some expert help with the party. Mark McClean on drums and David Finck on bass are fantastic musicians. Tedd Firth on the piano was positively on fire in his creativity. The trio was a jazz lover's dream. It is a delight to hear musicians of this caliber do what they do.

In 2020, Elizabeth Ward Land (Amazing Grace, Scandalous, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Memphis, City of Angels) won the Bistro Award for Outstanding Tribute Show for her work on STILL WITHIN THE SOUND OF MY VOICE: THE SONGS OF LINDA RONSTADT. Tonight she gave a repeat performance of that award-winning show at The Green Room 42. She hadn't finished the first number before it became clear why her show won awards. Not only is Elizabeth Ward Land a compelling actress and singer, her show is well structured, well written, well directed, and impeccably performed. She uses the facts of Linda Ronstadt's Life, a young girl who leaves her home and family in Tuscon for an uncertain future in music, to tell the story of Elizabeth Ward Land, a young girl who leaves her home and family in Denver for an uncertain future in theatre. They have much in common.

Tonight, SALON performed for the first time after sixteen months off. Even the threat of a tropical storm outside didn’t deter a good number of people from celebrating its return. This evening’s theme was threefold: “Welcome Back!,” “Sweet Sixteen” in honor of Salon’s 16th anniversary, and “Bernstein at 103” to celebrates the 103rd birthday of the great Leonard Bernstein. Tonight’s co-host was the much-awarded cabaret artist, Julie Reyburn.