CABARET LIFE NYC: Reaction to the Recent Rita Wilson and Molly Ringwald Cafe Carlyle Shows Reveal Much About How We View Singing Celebrities

Cabaret Reviews and Commentary by Stephen Hanks

Back in Janaury, I unfortunately missed what was by all reviewer accounts an extremely entertaining run of shows by the film and TV actor Jeff Daniels at 54 Below. Among the original songs the guitar-playing star of HBO's Newsroom delivered was a little ditty called, "If William Shatner Can, I Can Too" (see video), a reference to the "singing" career of the famed Star Trek actor. For those of you who might not know about Captain Kirk's recording career, in 1968 he released a bizarro-world album called The Transformed Man, where he offered dramatic readings of Shakespeare interspersed with lyrics of songs such as "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (LSD is the operative abbreviation there). Ten years later at the Science Fiction Film Awards, Shatner performed an often-parodied speak-singing rendition of Elton John's "Rocket Man." Beam us up, Scotty!

When Daniels (who actually can sing and can also write clever lyrics) introduces the song, he self-deprecatingly remarks, "I'm not the first celebrity or actor who thinks he can sing and get away with it," before citing Shatner as the forerunner of the celebrity/singer movement. The folkie melody includes references to faux singers Russell Crowe, Kathie Lee Gifford, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Adam Sandler, the Olsen Twins, and Rosanne Barr, who are all "just another celebrity with nothing to lose."

Which brings us to the recent cabaret show runs at the Café Carlyle of actor/celebrities Rita Wilson (late September) and Molly Ringwald (early October), both of whom also performed shows at 54 Below in 2013. Right from the outset, it should be clear that I'm not lumping Tom Hanks' lovely wife and film director John Hughes' favorite teenage girl actress into the tin ear/off pitch singer category with Shatner, Crowe, and company. Both women staged shows that were charming and entertaining and held my interest just based on the curiosity factor alone. They're not "pitchy," they don't sing off key, and they don't drop lyrics. While their cabaret show patter can be a bit too seat-of-the-pants, you don't tune them out because, well, they're celebrities. And don't we all hang on a celebrity's every word?

Wilson and Ringwald actually deserve a lot of credit for being gutsy enough to go out of their comfort zones as performers and venture into the intimate, sometimes scary art form known as cabaret, where you're always live and can't rely on extra takes. It's also obvious that they've worked very hard at becoming the best vocalists they can possibly be. They have just as much right to live out their cabaret performing fantasies as any of the would-be "singers" booking vanity shows in cabaret rooms all over the New York.

But here's the rub: If Wilson and Ringwald weren't bold-faced names would their singing really be considered good enough to merit them paid gigs (and extended ones at that) at the Café Carlyle? And if they weren't celebrities, would they be receiving such breathlessly positive reviews from critics (except, as far as I can find, from Rex Reed, who cited Ringwald's many missteps in The Observer), some of who should know better? The night I attended Ringwald's Carlyle show, I was sitting near a young reviewer I didn't recognize (he had to be a critic given he was taking copious notes throughout the show) and who after many of Molly's numbers let out a big "Whoop!" and then at the end of the show yelled "Encore!" like a few of the then slightly-inebriated patrons who'd partaken in Ringwald's "drinking game" (more on that later). It was all I could do not to lean over and quote a line from the Jeff Daniels film Something Wild: "Hey, buddy, attempt to be cool."

Are the Café Carlyle and the cabaret cognoscenti really intent on lowering the bar to the point that we're going to regard certain celebrities who are average singers on the same level as the Marilyn Mayes, Ann Hampton Callaways, and Jane Monheits of the world? Let's take it a step further: There are about 45 women singers considered "non-celebrities" who are going to be on the preliminary ballots for either "Best Show" or "Best Vocalist" (or both) for the 2014 BroadwayWorld New York Cabaret Awards. Almost all of them are superior vocalists to Rita Wilson and Molly Ringwald. Yet you can count the ones who've gotten a prime-time slot at the Carlyle on one-hand. A few of the more polished and highly-praised non-celebs, such as Natalie Douglas, Jennifer Sheehan, Marissa Mulder, Carole J. Bufford, and Joanne Tatham, achieved their brush with Café Carlyle greatness last year when the club instituted a short-lived late night show program, but it could be a long while before any of them gets to sing in front of the dinner-hour crowd. And that's a shame.

Look I'm not naïve. Even the one-percenters on the East Side love their celebrities and that's who they're going to plunk down $100-200 per person, plus cocktails, to see. The Café Carlyle needs to make money just like every other nightclub in town so they're going to book the bold-facers who will put fannies in their cushy seats. Let's all just maintain some perspective and not get carried away with considering certain celebrities "singing stars" and overlooking their substantial flaws. It just doesn't seem to be fair to all those truly gifted and talented singers in this town who are working their butts off to scrape together some money to stage their own shows at the more proletariat cabaret venues. End of speech.

Rita Wilson's two-week Carlyle engagement ran from September 24-October 4 and the opening night audience included her husband Tom Hanks (as you can tell by the tone of this column, no relation) and famed director Mike Nichols. Wilson fancies herself a throwback to the ladies who wrote music at California's Laurel Canyon back in the 1960s, and she entered the room looking more like a Vegas version of a flower child, her blonde/brownish hair flowing and a sparkly silver sweater over a short black dress (revealing killer legs, by the way). As opposed to featuring the covers of 1970s and '80s pop songs she performed at 54 Below, and which were from her 2012 debut album AM/FM, the Carlyle show highlighted almost all songs that Wilson has written with a string of collaborators. That turned out to be the wrong choice because as the show went on the set suffered from the unmistakable sound of repetitive and derivative pop.

Wilson opened with a song she co-wrote with Ann Marie Boskovich, "Along For the Ride," an up-tempo country pop tune that revealed her smoky, somewhat scratchy voice to be a bit Bonnie Raitt, a smidge of Sheryl Crow, and a flicker of Faith Hill. The next song, "Choices," also co-written with Boskovich, was a mid-tempo pop song with a country feel. After hearing the next two numbers, "Strong Tonight," and another up-tempo, country pop original, "Girls Night In," the scouting report on Wilson's vocals would have to read " . . . Pretty good karaoke singer." And while Wilson's patter was conversational and engaging, she too often referred to a script on a music stand. Don't actresses memorize their lines?

The best section of the show came midway when Wilson sang an original tribute song (written with Jason Reeves and Nelly Joy) about Joni Mitchell, a lovely ballad with lyrical references to classic Mitchell songs. A really great singer could make this one special. "What You See Is What You Get" was a fun 1990s-style pop song that could have come from Britney Spears or Sheryl Crow, and "Forgiving Me, Forgiving You," was a solid pop ballad during which Wilson displayed a nice upper register sound. But the songs in the last third of the show--five in all--were either mid-tempo or ballad melodies that sounded like we'd heard them before. Not even a solid band consisting of Wilson's Musical Director/guitarist Andrew Doolittle (who was so close to Wilson on stage he almost seemed like a security blanket for his singer), Alex Nevarro on piano/keyboards, Lee Nadel on bass, and Rich Mercurio on drums could give the set the extra juice it needed, mainly because they weren't given much to do other than play along.

Early in her show, Wilson talked about being a person who during her life has been very "risk-averse." If that's true then you have to give her major props for diving into the murky waters of cabaret performing. But she has some serious musical swimming ahead of her before she can rise to the surface.

Molly Ringwald was camped out at the Café Carlyle from October 7-18, her first time performing in New York since she appeared at 54 Below in January, 2013, and at Iridium four months later. As the daughter of blind jazz pianist, Bob Ringwald, Molly leans toward the jazzy side of song interpretation. But her sound is closer to easy listening, jazz light than anything you might hear from a Jane Monheit or a Diana Krall. Ringwald's voice isn't particularly distinctive or supple, and just because she's taking Great American Songbook tunes and jazzing them up, doesn't make her an interpretive jazz singer. But at least she and her extremely supportive Musical Director/Pianist Peter Smith select good songs for her style and range.

Ringwald walked to the Carlyle stage looking glam-chic in a slinky, burgundy, floor length bare shouldered dress with a sexy slit up the side. It was the ideal outfit when you're going to start a set with a supple, seductive song like Stephen Sondheim's "Sooner or Later" from the film Dick Tracy, complete with a pseudo-jazzy arrangement. Ringwald proved she could handle a torch song, with lovely renditions of Hoagy Carmichael's "I Get Along Without You Very Well," and Billy Holiday's "Don't Explain." The latter featuring an intense arrangement from Smith (with Trevor Ware on bass and Tony Jefferson on drums), while Smith was also solid on piano during an up-tempo, jazzy arrangement of Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Mercer's "I Thought About You."

Midway through the set, Ringwald didn't display the chops to pull off tunes like "I'll Take Romance" or a very staccato arrangement of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" But she hit her stride after that with a sensual take on Rodgers & Hart's "It Never Entered My Mind," and then removed her heels before a nice mid-tempo offering on "Mean To Me." Just when she seemed to be on a roll, Ringwald tried a rapid-tempo, scat-style arrangement of "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story, which was just way too ambitious for her ability, at least in this show. Such inconsistency, in fact, permeated the set, perhaps a result of opening-night jitters. For example, Ringwald's on-stage demeanor at the Carlyle alternated between confident and insecure. Her patter was conversational but she seemed to be winging the set order, turning to Smith often to ask, "What's up next" or "What should we do now?" She also spent a lot of time uber-promoting her most recent CD, Except Sometimes, by turning every mention of the disc into a drinking game, which a gent right up front totally bought.

Before her finale, Ringwald set up the number by calling it, "One of the most romantic songs ever," and then proceeded to take all the romance out of "On The Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady with an up-tempo, jazzy arrangement of the Lerner & Loewe classic. But Molly and her band redeemed themselves on the encore with an arrangement of "Don't You Forget About Me"--one of the 1980s anthems from Ringwald's film, The Breakfast Club--that transformed the song into a torchy, mid-tempo ballad.

With that, our Pretty in Pink girl was off to camp out at the Carlyle coat check to sell CDs--just like every other cabaret performer, struggling or otherwise.

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