Feature: The Days Of Cabaret Gratitude - Day Six - The Siren

The Days Of Cabaret Gratitude

Day Seven:  The Siren - Frances Ruffelle

When it comes to cabaret and concert (well, when it comes to show business, really), it always helps if a person is an original.  Of course, there are many hard working, talented, journeying actors who take on roles with great success every day, telling the stories from a quieter place.  And then there are the originals, who up the ante a little for themselves, for their craft, and for their audiences.  Frances Ruffelle is an original.

A star of Broadway, the UK’s West End, and nightclub stages anywhere and everywhere (not to mention her real-time real life, the fashion pages, and the social media networks) Frances Ruffelle raises the vibrations in every room, in every situation, in every conversation.  She has that rare thing that the ages have called “IT” and she is that rare find that the people call a Star.  A talented singing actress who took home a Tony Award for originating the role of Eponine in Les Miserables, Frances Ruffelle has gone on to play many interesting parts in many shows, and one suspects that, with her in the driver’s seat, the parts were more interesting than they had ever been before.  

So when Frances Ruffelle is working in cabaret and concert and the fascinating character on the stage is named Frances Ruffelle, you can be certain that all bets are off, and that the people sitting in the seats out front are in for a real show.

That’s what happened in the year before the quarantine and pandemic.  Frances Ruffelle was playing a year-long residency at The Green Room 42 with a musical cabaret titled Frances Ruffelle LiveS In New York, a musical cabaret so well respected, so well loved, so well-renowned that nobody could stop talking about it.  Everyone everywhere was talking about the Frances Ruffelle show at The Green Room 42, and every performance was packed to the rafters.  By the time this writer got around to seeing the months-old and still-selling-every-seat show, the play had a kind of legend around it, and it was easy to see why:  it was astonishing.  To this day, that performance has been what this writer considers the benchmark of what cabaret can be.  The production was storytelling at its finest and most fabulous - equal parts club act, cabaret, performance art, legitimate theater, fashion show, and acid trip.  It was the most artistic cabaret show ever seen by this aficionado, before or since.  It still haunts the memory and still holds its first place.

Now Frankie Ruffelle is back in New York City.  She has a new beau and a new show and she is ready to go.  So when Frankie & Beausy opens at 54 Below on November 10th, you can bet I will be there.  I will be there to see this artist supreme, to see what madcap madness is being created this time around, and to see what kind of a fellow this Norman Bowman is.  If he can handle all the whacky whimsy and magical mayhem of Frances Ruffelle, he must be a pretty special guy.

But, then, Frankie is a pretty special ... well, everything.

Read the Broadway World Cabaret review of Frances Ruffelle LiveS In New York HERE.

Frances will appear at 54 Below in FRANKIE AND BEAUSY on November 10th and 11th.  Intel and reservations to be gotten HERE.

Frances’s pronouns are she/her (Frankie adds “Madam” and a laughing/crying emoji.)

Frances can be found online at the following links:

Website:  HERE 

Instagram:  HERE 

Facebook:  HERE  

Twitter:  HERE  

TikTok:  HERE  

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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