Nightlife Award Winner Christine Pedi

Christine Pedi is as famous for her comic skills and impressions as she is for her musical ability. She flawlessly mimicked Broadway divas for years in Forbidden Broadway, and has created numerous cabaret events to salute the great composers of Broadway. Currently, she is headlining at the Metropolitan Room in Now I Have Everything: The Lyrics of Sheldon Harnick. Her recent cabaret show, Great Dames, combined her many talents as a singer and impressionist, and earned her the 2008 Nightlife Award for Outstanding Cabaret Comedy or Characterization.

Great Dames evolved from an earlier project, Forbidden Divas, which featured Pedi doing her greatest hits from Forbidden Broadway. The show had a limited run in New York City, but Pedi saw a different future for it. "I needed to create something that was along those lines [in terms of] high-energy comedy, Forbidden Broadway material, but that the general public at large out there in the middle of the country between New York and Los Angeles could understand," she says. "So I deliberately chose songs that were very well associated with famous leading ladies like Julie Andrews, and famous Broadway musicals about strong women like Chicago. And I created comic songs for other impressions I do that were not from Forbidden Broadway, like Barbra Streisand singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and a medley of ABBA songs that Liza Minnelli sings."

Once the show was ready, she brought it to theatres across America. "I wanted to bring the stuff I was famous for in New York out past the tri-state area, but in a form that would be understandable and identifiable to places that aren't necessarily musical-theatre literate," she says. The gamble paid off. Packed audiences in Texas were "wonderful," she says, and she will be bringing the piece to Johannesburg, South Africa in the coming months. "It's the perfect example of me not being able to do all my impressions, because they're not going to resonate for South African audiences," she explains. "They're going to appreciate the comedy."

The comedy has certainly been appreciated in New York, and Pedi's work has earned her a Nightlife Award. "I think the Nightlifes is the best awards show on the planet," she says. "It's packed with non-stop entertainment… There's nothing like it anywhere in the world…  It gives everyone a greater sense of the worth of the product, of the art. You can do a tiny little show at Don't Tell Mama and win a Nightlife Award, and you can be opposite somebody who's been headlining at the Carlyle. It really is about content and quality."

Christine Pedi (photo by Mark Rupp)

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