Review: BROADWAY SINGS Gives Simple Tribute to a Giant With BROADWAY SINGS: SONDHEIM At The Green Room 42

Heigh-Ho, My Merry Rainbow Tribe! Bobby Patrick your RAINBOW Reviewer here. Putting the silent T in cabareT to bring you all the T!

Well, my dear readers, there comes a time in the life and wordsmithing of every reviewer - even silly little Bobby with his kitschy, bitchy, sweet smell of someone else's success, critique-free (mostly) rainbow reviews when words simply fail and the job of a critic becomes a most difficult delight. Wednesday night's BROADWAY SINGS: SONDHEIM at The Green Room 42 was this watershed journalistic moment for yours truly. Having never experienced any of the work from the BROADWAY SINGS organization, there were zero expectations going in, and having arrived just as the cast was filing onto the stage, Little Bobby barely had time to pull out a notebook before the lights dimmed and the show was off to the races. BroadwaySingsConcert.com is a full-service event entertainment company employing some of Broadways best actor/vocalists and musicians, assembling a cast with a full orchestra to deliver full concerts saluting a variety of genres - artists ranging from Adele to Freddy Mercury/Queen to Sara Bareilles all the way out to Taylor Swift and back to Broadway. For Wednesday night's show, though, produced and directed by equally gifted actor and singer Corey Mach (Waitress, Wicked) simplicity was the order of the day. The cast of 10 (including Mach) with music director Joshua Stephen Kartes at the piano, sat in a semi-circle on stools all the way upstage, and, as each intro began to flow from the keyboard, the singers took their turn at the mic. There were no preambles, no introductions, just one Sondheim song sung after another with only Kartes piano for accompaniment.

Now Bobby could rattle on giving you the batting order of tunes from the company we kept on the night al la, "He sang this and it was FANTASTIC, she sang that and it was AWESOME or they sang some other fab thing" etc.. and I think we all know how that can just be a big snore to read. Or we could go on and on listing the highlights and who sang those highlights and how marvelously they sounded singing those highlights and how professional they all were in approaching their highlights, how they all had their words memorized with not a music stand in sight... So you all see our quandary here. Each song was a highlight not only from the career of Broadway's Titan of words and music but from a group of young performers all singing and acting at the top of their games. And speaking of acting... the most brilliant part of the evening, the component that left us in the house breathless, the elusive under the surface piece of the puzzle that was going on all evening, was the fact that Mach had each performer playing the characters to whom each song is associated at the moment in their respective shows that the songs happen with all their emotions and needs in play. Even those musical numbers sung by Nasia Thomas (Caroline, or Change), Alysha Umphress (On the Town), or by Kartes himself that had been tweaked into jazzier arrangements, giving each of them opportunities to offer their own beautiful rhythmic and tonal surprises, still required the singers to act the moments from which the music originated... and act them they did. The roster of talent about which we have nothing but praise included an incredibly gifted last-minute substitute - Preston Boyd (Sunset Boulevard), Jay Armstrong Johnson (On the Town), Max Chernin (Sunday in the Park with George), Zak Resnick (Mamma Mia), and Jillian Kates (Wicked - who kicked some fashion A$$ going shirtless in a green & black tux) all of whom seemed to be playing the life or death stakes that Sondheim baked into his songs in ways that were potent, real and raw. A special call-out though must be given to Michael Wordly (The Color Purple) whose epic performance of the Witch's STAY WITH ME from INTO THE WOODS, in a high, HIGH countertenor voice that sent the song soaring around the room in unimagined ways had even the superb people on stage cheering and applauding and in the case of Zak Resnick, giving his castmate an "I bow to you" sign from his perch stage right. Even the mistakes were solid art, for when Kartes lost his place from behind the piano and could not find the score he needed, he simply shut his laptop and accompanied Jay Armstrong Johnson's gorgeous JOANNA (from SWEENY TODD) from memory. This circumstance then set up some comic improv and stage banter on the next song by Corey Mach and Resnick as they had to vamp a bit while their music director sorted his technology before launching into the AGONY Reprise from INTO THE WOODS.

And so my dear lambkins, this commercial announcement for the broadwaysingsconcert.com is the unavoidable result of hard work, good taste, and loads of talent being mixed together brilliantly by the eyes and ears of two gifted artisans in the gorgeous personages of Cory Mach Joshua Stephen Kartes. This show was a total home run hit out of the park and, after speaking to some in the know in the biz, I am reliably informed that this is par for the course for this company. And so, any chance you people out there in the dark may find to take in a BROADWAY SINGS concert, you can rest assured that Bobby gives them his full...

5 Out of 5 Rainbows

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All Photos By Yours Truly, Bobby Patrick

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