Review: Bianca Marroquín WHERE YOU ARE Makes 54 Below The Place You Want To Be

It is absolutely appropriate that Bianca Marroquín began her recent show at 54 Below with Chita Rivera's Kiss Of The Spider Woman showstopper "Where You Are" because it is very clear that this Mexican dancing diva has come to carry on the torch of fierce Latin Ladies playing the Broadway stage. The parallels are in the room. Ms. Marroquín has recently been playing Broadway in CHICAGO, a play with which Ms. Rivera has a (*ahem*) passing acquaintance. Bianca has also, coincidentally, played Chita Rivera in the award-winning television series FOSSE/VERDON. It is easy to associate the two Latin actresses (and it would be a dream come true to see Marroquín play Aurora The Spider Woman at some point) but it would be a mistake to simply make that association and leave it at that. Bianca Marroquín is an actress and a woman who may stand proudly with her Latin sisters of show business, but she is an actress and a woman who stands on her own. Her individuality rises in the air as deftly and gracefully as an arm in port de bras, and that individuality is a thing of beauty that makes it easy to love and appreciate her for exactly who she is.

In her one woman show titled WHERE YOU ARE, Bianca Marroquín focuses a fair amount on the musical theater that has infused her life, her passion, and her artistry, performing numbers from plays like A Chorus Line, The Sound of Music, Songs From a New World, and, naturally, Chicago, but in each instance Ms. Marroquín has done the savvy thing that an artist of the cabaret and concert stage should do, in order to make the journey personal: she has applied the songs to events in her own life. Using a story arc that tells her audience where she came from as an actress, how it all started, how it all went, and how it's all going, Marroquínshares herself, generously, with the audience, and as one watches and listens, there is an overwhelming sense that Bianca Marroquín is a goofball. She might even be a bit of a nerd. This gorgeous, elegant, sexy, sophisticated lady loves to laugh so much that it is impossible to sit in a room where she is telling stories and not be infectiously affected by how adorably she throws herself into joy. Well, there's your show, right there. Joy and a dream come true, in a real-life story being told by a consummate musical theater performer. And Bianca Marroquín is a consummate musical theater performer.

There are those who go on the stage and dance. There are those who go on the stage and are dance. Some people can put choreography in their club act. Others are the choreography in their club act. There isn't a moment in her show in which Bianca Marroquín does not embody dance. The pinkie finger flicks. The eyelash dips. A simple turn of the head to look at a musician causes a sigh. Mere posture resembles a Rockette. Every movement and every moment, Biana Marroquin IS dance, even when seated at a piano to play or standing stock still at the microphone. This is a phenomenon that happens only now and then on the cabaret and concert stage, and when it happens it is because the actor on the stage is Donna McKechnie, Tony Yazbeck, Jess LeProtto, or, yes, Chita Rivera. That's Bianca Marroquín all over the place: she is a dancer and that informs each story that is being told during her show of stories.

Let it not, though, be said that Bianca Marroquín is only a dancer, for Bianca is a fine actress who can make a person cry with her very own unique spin on "Stars And The Moon" (and it did make this writer and all three of the people at my table cry) or she can draw gales of laughter with her Sound of Music medley, as applied to her role as stepmother to the children she adores and helped through a recent (*ahem*) pandemic and quarantine. Bianca breaks hearts with "Move On" and lifts them up with the Minnelli/Fosse version of "Bye Bye Blackbird" and she sets the house on fire anytime she sings in her native language (the performance of "Piel Canela" was an evening highlight, aided along by an incredible band led by Dan Micciche). Bianca Marroquin's ability to tell stories in song using all the parts of her considerable talent, be it singing, dancing, acting, or songwriting is admirable. Yeah, songwriting. No triple-threat is this lady, rather, a quadruple-threat. Near the end of Where You Are Bianca Marroquín played a mini-set of three songs with music and lyrics supplied by her own self, one a song that was featured in a film and one song that was featured in her wedding. Undeniably the most romantic and touching moment of the night was watching Bianca sit at the piano to play and sing the lovely "Your Love Lets Me See" while looking across the room at her husband. There wasn't a person in the room who wasn't beaming ear to ear, sighing, crying or all three. It was a special moment and a lovely way to close the show, until Marroquín returned with a whole buncha boys to bring it home, like the star that she is, with a mashup of "All That Jazz" and "Roxie" from Chicago. It was nothing less than perfection. Where You Are is simply one of the most fun, exciting, entertaining, and uplifting nights a person could spend in a cabaret room, but one suspects that all of that can always be found Where Bianca Is.

The Where You Are personnel are:

Musical Director/piano: Dan Micciche

Alex Bender on trumpet, Michael Blanco on bass, Lou Garrett on guitar, Lilly Holgate on violin, Matt Vanderen on drums, Mike Webb on reeds.

Dancers: Eddie Bennett and Colt Weiss

Find great shows to see on the 54 Below website HERE.

Visit the Bianca Marroquín Instagram @biancapamelamarroquin

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

An earlier version of this story went live before it was completed. Apologies to all. -- SM

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