Review: AN EVENING WITH L MORGAN LEE Charms Charming Audience at Newman Mills Theater

One of the best parts of going to the L Morgan Lee show on May 26th was just walking up to the Newman Mills Theater and standing in line in the lobby to pick up tickets.  A major portion of the patrons of the concert (a joint production between National Queer Theater and the Musical Theatre Factory, involving Carnegie Hall and MCC Theater) was made up of members of New York City’s beautiful trans, nonbinary, queer community, and it was a joy to see them gathered to celebrate a member of their family at the top of her game.  Because L Morgan Lee is the first transgender woman to be nominated for a Tony Award (for the musical play A Strange Loop), she is an important part of history… which raised, for this writer, a quandary of a question: to write about L Morgan Lee, the actress who gave a concert, or to write about L Morgan Lee, the trans actress who gave a concert?  At some point (I believe) it would be nice for L Morgan Lee to be judged, solely, on the merit of her talent as an actress.  At some point (I assume) it would be nice for L Morgan Lee to know that people respected her choices as a storyteller, her skill as a singer, her training, her background, and her concentrated effort, as an artist.  After all, there have been instances when a gay actor has expressed a wish to be known as an actor, not as a gay actor; there have been occasions when a woman writer has declared a desire to be hailed as a writer, not as a woman writer.  Where do we separate the artist from the person? 

L Morgan Lee’s place in the annals of queer history is extremely important because representation matters.  The wonderful, magical queer, trans, nonbinary citizens who turned up to see this show (part of Carnegie Hall’s Women in Music series) came to see an actress that they love but they also came to see a woman who, by sheer virtue of her accomplishments, is a part of their history, a building block (nay, a pillar) in trans visibility.  She is a warrior and an activist, simply by living in the light, by succeeding, by breaking barriers.  This isn’t a credit on a resume, it’s a state of being: L Morgan Lee is a trans woman, an actress, and a Tony Award nominee.  When she wakes in the morning, puts on her face and her shoes, and leaves the house, she is representing women, women of color, trans women, actresses, and so much more - that’s the life and the work that L Morgan Lee does every single day.

But her audience need not be made up only of friends, family, and the LGBTQ community.  L Morgan Lee’s audience should be made up of everyone.  L Morgan Lee’s audience should be comprised of people of all demographics, so long as they enjoy quality entertainment because L Morgan Lee is wonderful.

For her hour-long program at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, Ms. Lee explained in her opening remarks that she didn’t want to build structure or a story arc: she just wanted to sing.  In fact, Ms. Lee commented that she would like to talk as little as possible and focus on the music, believing that that was what everyone had come for.   She was sort of right.  Listening to her sing songs from some of her favorite musicals, and watching her tell stories through song was very rewarding, quite satisfying.  But she was also kind of wrong because L Morgan Lee is a charming orator who tells the stories of her life with a pleasant ease that communicates that charm while showing her audience what a friendly, unassuming, and playful human being she is.  It is difficult not to fall a little in love with L Morgan Lee while she speaks extemporaneously about her experiences in life and in the theater - she is one of those people who, by virtue of her benevolence and her inability to be false, makes you want to be friends with her, which is always a gift for a cabaret and concert performer.  

Then there are L Morgan Lee’s gifts as a singer.

Curating a catalogue of songs that she has either sung, would like to sing, or will probably never sing in their original context (according to Lee), L Morgan displayed a light and airy soprano that carried out into the audience with power that actually needed no amplification, a fact easily noted by the fact that she often holds the microphone as much as a foot away from her face.  This sweet and palatable voice melded splendidly with fine acting and storytelling skills on songs like “Someone To Watch Over Me” and an especially enjoyable “Mr. Snow” that was an evening highlight.  Showing versatility in vocal production and performance styles, Lee also tackled an impressive (and telling) medley from A Chorus Line and the famed “Popular” from Wicked, after remarking that these are both shows she will never get to do … except this writer thinks L Morgan Lee would be a marvelous Glinda, a thought readily proven by this very performance.  Mind you, immediately following the number from Wicked, Lee took a sharp right into the blues with a delicious rendition of Fats Waller’s “Squeeze Me” that showed some luscious low notes and lasciviousness, giving the crowd another evening highlight.  The truth is, though, that AN EVENING WITH L Morgan Lee was filled with highlights, seemingly programmed so that each performance bested the one that preceded it. First, the Waller number made better an already fine evening, and, then, so did Lee’s breathtaking “When Daniel Marries Me” (breathtaking, underlined) and so on, and so forth until L Morgan Lee closed out her show by stepping away from the mic stand for back-to-back mic-less performances of “My Man” and “Somewhere That’s Green.”  It was a bold and daring way to end her show, artistically, but it was also a (perhaps intentional, maybe unintentional) symbol of her life as a woman, a trans woman, a trans woman of color, a trans woman of color who is an actress.  Seeing this tiny titan standing on the stage singing, first, a belting torch song, and, then, a quiet lullaby, one couldn’t help but notice that L Morgan Lee doesn’t just have power as a vocalist and as a storyteller - she has power as a person, a sweet, petite woman standing on a stage and telling her tale.  L Morgan Lee IS power.  She is beauty, she is art, and she is power.  And she is worth catching any time she does a show like this - may there be many.

The band for AN EVENING WITH L Morgan Lee was as follows:

Musical Director/Piano:  Steven Cuevas

Percussion:  Brandon Ilaw

Bass:  Jordyn Davis

Woodwinds:  Nicole DeMaio

Learn more about the Musical Theatre Factory HERE.

The National Queer Theater has a website HERE.

THIS is the L Morgan Lee website.

Photos by Stephen Mosher; Visit the Stephen Mosher website HERE.

 

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