Review: JULIE HALSTON - JUDGE JULIE PRESIDING At Birdland Is Guilty of Slaying Em In The Aisles!

Heigh-Ho, My Merry Rainbow Tribe! Bobby Patrick your RAINBOW Reviewer here. Putting the silent T in CABARET to bring you all the T, and this time it's C for Comedy!

Well, my dears, it seems an almost pointless exercise to give a review to Julie Halston, a lady who has been making us laugh since the early '80s. She has built, brick by brick, a New York stage acting career that has wracked up 9 Broadway and 17-Off Broadway Shows. Her Off-Bway works as credited by the Lortel Library, though misses her grungier, lower east side pre 1985 Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway work in bars and backrooms with Charles Busch founding their Theatre-in-Limbo that made her initial reputation. Busch considered Halston his muse and together they assayed Limbo's productions of, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1984), The Lady in Question (1989), Red Scare on Sunset (1991), You Should be so Lucky (1994) and rejoined forces in the 2010s for The Divine Sister (2011) & The Tribute Artist (2013). She has garnered a shocking 4 Drama Desk NOMINATIONS (shocking because they are Noms and not WINS,) and in her partnership with Mr. Busch and others, Halston has brought to life so many camp, parody, farce, clown and comedy characters on our stages that she is fast approaching that appellation given to long term survivors of the business of show, "LEGEND". Add to all of that, she is one of our most esteemed nightclub funny ladies who can stand up with the best of the business and be admired by them (she is said to have been a favorite of the late Robin Williams) and you truly do tip the scales over into that legendary bucket ... full of water that falls on your head soaking you to the skin.

Rita Marshall
Maude P. Dilly
Gay Wellington
Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt
Miss Cratchitt
Electra
Prudy Pingleton
Velma Von Tussle
Mrs. McCutcheon

From their names, you can almost picture the kinds of women who would be waiting for you on the other side of the door in your game of Gay Broadway Mystery Date, and each and every one of them was tailored by Halston to a fine comedy, couture fit. La Halston landed in her home nest at Birdland Monday night and brought the house to its knees with her brand of Long Island, Irish/Sicilian Catholic who would rather be a jew foolery and frippery. To launch into a litany of "Then she said this, then she said that and everyone laughed," would be even more pointless than writing a review she won't read and could make her mad at Bobby for spoiling her act. But, we CAN say that Halston's tried and true Will Rogers by way of Comac, LI routine of reading hilarious clips from newspapers still, in the vernacular, kills. Her jokes about herself, her facelifts and botox; the devastation of age on her body in general, might fall into the "What we've come to expect from... Her..." category, but those self-lampoons coupled with her sweetness and own brand of tainted innocence lift them out of the "battleax making fun of herself" realm that was so brilliantly refined by the late Joan Rivers. Halston, in fact, has often been compared to Joan and even called a "Joan Rivers type comic" a compliment for sure, but frankly, we don't see it. Joan's hilariously dark, cynical, sarcasm is in a different column from Julie's perpetually perplexed, confused innocence. She just doesn't understand why the world, the news, her body or her audience on the night are the way they are and so she must explore as much as expose. Highlighting with her signature YOWL hilarious points of interest along the journey in her reading of a long New York Times feature about a horsey bride whose equestrian dream was to have her favorite mount as her wedding RING BEARER, Halston's wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock and awe of it all created an avalanche of laughs. Also, a pleasant wistfulness has folded into Ms. H's work, as a few times, she leads into comedy bits with back story that involves her late husband, the venerable, New York newscaster Ralph Howard, who died just a little over a year ago. She doesn't dwell on her widowhood, other than to say, she is a widow now, but one can sense a touch of longing in her craft that reaches for the laughs along with her generosity in supplying the reason to laugh. Her act ends always leaving them wanting more... so, she came back... and, with a warning to the audience to not say every line along with her, encored with her comedy insurance policy, DEAR ANN LANDERS.

She talks about the mundane and the explosive; from newspaper wedding features to style/life advice from the one and only Joan Crawford, combining them in her ever bubbling cauldron of comedy, so, one can never go wrong spending the cash to see Julie Halston on stage. Whether she is creating a character in a play or musical or if you are taking in a truly inspired (and inspiring) comedienne (NO! I won't stop using that word!) on the nightclub stage you are all in for the most laughs; and for all of those laughs past, present and on the night, we give Julie Halston - JUDGE JULIE PRESIDING a hearty 5 out of 5 Rainbows.

Tweet Julie's Twitters: HERE
Follow her Insta: HERE
And On Ye Olde FaceBooke: HERE

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