Review: Christina Bianco Wows Green Room 42 Audience With DIVA ON DEMAND

On Friday, February 17th, Christina Bianco took The Green Room 42 by storm with her new solo show, Diva on Demand. These days, it often feels like theater and cabaret are fighting an uphill battle for attention span against the little electronic box we all keep within arm's reach - and occasionally losing. For most singers, it would be a mistake to encourage the audience to look at their phones periodically throughout a show, as the concept of Diva on Demand requires (Bianco sets up a series of choices for each number with an online poll to determine the winner by crowd vote).

However, Bianco is such an electric performer there was no risk of distraction even with keeping your phone at the ready for the next vote. She opened the show with a fun original number that highlighted the theme of the show, Netflix, TV binging, and streaming content. The show's content ran the gamut from mass media appeal to niche Broadway references (like The Wonder Woman TV theme as a duet between Julie Andrews and Idina Menzel). The entire night, Christina was firing on a million cylinders, enacting a dizzying feat of logistics, ready to perform any one of 80 numbers on a moment's notice, keeping the whole thing tongue in cheek and spontaneous feeling, even though it was clearly a carefully rehearsed act. "That was actually much harder than it looked," she reminded us, several times throughout. As the first crowd-choice number, she did a flawless "Liza With a Z" as Minnelli herself (beating out "Yes" and "Ring Those Bells"), and then explained that, on top of it being a hard song to do, it was a bit harder because she had just done the famous song in London as a parody version she had written, using her own name ("Bianco with a co not Bianca with a ca 'cause Bianca with a ca goes ca not co") and she was still hearing the words to that, over the real song. Then, Christina proceeded to prove the point by singing the song again with the parody lyrics.

To sing at the level Bianco does would be one thing. To sing with her power and strength while doing one of whichever 30+ impressions are pulled out of a hat (or chosen by crowd vote) seems like nothing short of miraculous. The entire night felt like Bianco's attempt to give herself higher and higher feats to top, and meeting them. On one particularly tough number, she took a deep breath and told herself, "You can do it. You made these choices."

Bianco sparkled on stage, figuratively and literally, wearing a sparkly silver skirt that highlighted her on-stage persona. The night was fun and Bianco found a way to include everyone, even the crowd watching the stream at home, who she addressed periodically throughout. At one point she wended her way through the audience singing "I Say a Little Prayer for You" (an homage to Burt Bacharach's recent passing), giving a few people from the crowd solos a la the scene from My Best Friend's Wedding.

Christina was accompanied by Brad Simmons on the piano and vocals. Simmons also had a lovely voice, wowing the audience on one of Bianco's final numbers, a duet of "I've Had the Time of My Life" (which, incidentally, is also a phrase I'd use to describe the entire concert).

If you missed seeing Bianco this week at The Green Room 42, you can find out more about her upcoming shows and find all of her social media (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok) at her website https://www.christinabianco.com/.

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