Review: Marta Sanders Owns The Laurie Beechman Theatre During WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THAT NICE QUAKER GIRL?

One day after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the board of the Manhattan Association of Cabarets, Marta Sanders premiered her new show WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THAT NICE QUAKER GIRL? at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, and the full house that packed the room on the night of her premiere got a good look at exactly why Marta Sanders has had the career she has had and why she should be given all the awards.

Take out a moment and think of the most interesting person you know. Now, think about the strongest person you know, the most powerful person you know, the most fearless person you know, and the most irresistible person you know. Now add the most talented person you know. Take all that and multiply it by ten. You now have a little bit of what you will get when you are in a room and Marta Sanders is on the stage.

In the show Whatever Happened To That Nice Quaker Girl?, Ms. Sanders may start out by discussing the recent Lifetime Achievement award but she rapidly gets down to the business at hand, which is the telling of tales from the youth that made her. From her family history to her upbringing in a Quaker family, from her early interest in the performing arts to encouragement bestowed upon her by her family, from the exotic locales she visited in her youth to the incredible adventures she had in her twenties, Marta Sanders regales her audience with storytelling and song. Now... not everyone's life is interesting enough for this kind of exploration, but Marta Sanders' life plays like a Sidney Sheldon novel that was made into a Pedro Almodóvar movie before being made into a Kander & Ebb musical. When Marta Sanders tells the audience that everything she is about to say is true, there can be no doubt that they are not expecting the stories that will fill the next eighty minutes of their life because this is a life to be talked about and a life to be remembered, and the chances are strong that there is enough material for Sanders to make at least another five club acts. If the cabaret-going public is even slightly lucky, this is simply volume one.

Working magnificently with Director and Musical Director Mark Nadler, Marta Sanders plays her show with the skill of a craftswoman. She takes her time with the stories, she knows her rhythms, she's got the beat of her script in her bones, she connects with her audience, and she is always en pointe in her service of the tale being told. To watch her in action is to be in a master class in storytelling, whether you call it cabaret, nightclub act, or one-woman show. She is an absolute original and knows precisely what it takes to inform a cabaret act with one's own personal history. And since there is so much ground to cover in her nearly hour and a half show, Sanders is lucky to have Nadler on the stage with her because he's got her back. Once or twice, maybe three times, Mark was there to remind Marta where she should be, let her know if she was off track, and to drop in an important story that might have been passed over. The twosome is a great one, and watching them play off of each other and play with each other is merely an enhancement of the journey upon which you are being taken, one that will split the side with laughter and touch the heart with tears. Unusual song choices and interesting treatments will leave the audience howling and shaking their heads, and near the end of the act, back-to-back performances of songs by Orton & James and The Bergmans render a person slack-jawed and depleted; indeed, Marta's performance of the song that she performed when she won her first MAC award is storytelling the like of which this writer has seen only once before, in a video of Judy Garland singing the song "Cottage For Sale."

Readers will have noticed, by this point, a not very subtle insistence upon omitting the names of a single song that Marta Sanders sings in her show. That is because Marta Sanders is an experience. She must BE experienced. She cannot be relegated to a descriptive act. There can be no spoilers, not a single one. Interested parties should make a reservation and go to the show. If planning on eating, arrive early and enjoy dinner beforehand because the service is a tad tardy, but, also, it is best to watch Sanders with no distraction whatsoever. Simply know this: Marta Sanders is one of the best storytellers (possessing of one of the most shocking voices) that anybody interested in musical storytelling will ever have the privilege of experiencing. And, with this new show, Marta Sanders is getting to use all of it to her extreme advantage, and that of her audience.

Nobody can do what Marta Sanders can do: go see her do it.

Marta Sanders WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THAT NICE QUAKER GIRL plays The Laurie Beechman Theatre April 15th at 7 pm. For reservations visit the Laurie Beechman website HERE.

Marta Sanders can be found online HERE.

Mark Nadler has a website HERE.

The lighting for Whatever Happened To That Nice Quaker Girl is by JP Perreaux, who has outdone himself.

Marta Sanders gets a five out of five microphones rating for performing her entire show without the use of a lyric sheet, tablet, or music stand.

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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