BWW Reviews: LIZ CALLAWAY Celebrates the Holiday Season with Warm, Spirited, and Infectiously Uplifting Show at 54 Below

Tony Award nominee and Emmy Award-winning actress Liz Callaway's latest offering at 54 Below, Celebrate!, will send you into the cold night feeling better about everything. Callaway celebrates the holidays, family, and personal milestones with Disney-like buoyancy that never becomes cloying. (She's actually given voice to Disney characters in animated films and sings two appealing numbers from Anastasia in this show.) Hallmarks of natural stage authority, vibrant vocal clarity and theatrical investment in lyrics can be counted on with this empathetic artist.

High beam renditions of "I Know a Place" and "Celebration" (with Musical Director Alex Rybeck and bassist Jered Egan vocally echoing encouragement) open the festivities. The room instantly perks up. Following on its heels, an iconoclastic, mambo interpretation of "We Need a Little Christmas"--welcoming Cuba to the fold?--conjures tinsel on palm trees. As unlikely as the choice sounds, it works. Audience heads bob, shoulders raise and lower, smiles bloom.

Of the several personal milestones Callaway noted for the past year is her increased travel resulting in airline platinum status. "What Do We Do? We Fly" (Richard Rodgers/Stephen Sondheim) is more satirically apt than when it was written in 1965 for the Broadway show Do I Hear a Waltz? Inserting acerbic comments between verses, the vocalist seems deliciously perturbed. A second landmark was the marriage of so many (gay) friends at whose weddings she performed. (Sister Ann Hampton Callaway got happily hitched this year.) "In one 18-hour stretch, I sang on two coasts. It was exhausting--but, oh! the mileage." One of those songs was John Bucchino's lovely "It Feels Like Home." Callaway exudes gratitude and gentleness. Thirty plus years drop away and she's a newlywed.

Family traditions predictably include caroling around the piano played by mom (who was beaming from a back booth through the show.) Ann Hampton Callaway joins her sister onstage for one of several selections from Liz's new Christmas CD: Merry and Bright. "Silent Night" segues into a simply beautiful rendition of "Mary, Did You Know?" (Mark Lowry/Buddy Greene) Mary did you know that your baby boy will someday walk on water . . . The pop/gospel arrangement is harmonically pristine and unabashedly stirring.

"You may have noticed a tall young man . . . " introduces Callaway's son, Nick Callaway Foster, who performs with his proud mother on "The Prayer" in English and Italian. The sound is lustrous, exalted, the pairing 24-carat. Callaway's solo on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," with figure-skating piano and lightly whooshing brushes, emerges like a Norman Rockwell print or heirloom snow globe.

The singer's finale, "The Story Goes On," from her role in Broadway's 1983 Baby (Richard Maltby Jr./David Shire), feels eminently appropriate in its reference to generational bonds. Performance is intoxicating, celebratory. Her radiant voice soars on the wings of love. Musicianship is symbiotic and skilled.

Celebrate! - Liz Callaway
Alex Rybeck-Musical Director/Piano
Jered Egan-Bass, Ron Tierno-Drums
Directed by Dan Foster
54 Below 254 West 54th St.
December 23, 24, 26, 27
Venue Calendar: http://54below.com/

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