Review: KELLI O'HARA Connects 92NY Audience With Artistry Supreme

"I don't even know what I'm here to see..."

That was a colleague of mine, a reviewer from another outlet.

"Except for Kelli..." he completed his sentence.

I didn't know, either. The show description on the 92NY website was, admittedly, a little vague. In fact, the press materials I had been provided were equally as nebulous. That's ok. It didn't bother me, I was happy to be at the 92nd Street Y on a Friday night, waiting to see Kelli O'Hara. There was little to nothing about which to be bothered.

Mind you, that wasn't the case for the elderly lady seated behind me. She was distraught over the lack of a song list in the program, so much so that she asked every person seated near her, and every person who passed by her on the aisle, if there was a song list, if there was going to be a song list, if she was going to be given a song list so that she would know what Kelli O'Hara was going to sing.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if Kelli O'Hara is singing show tunes, country and western, heavy metal, or Gregorian chant: everyone would be advised to just take a leap of faith, get a ticket, sit calmly but excitedly in the chair, and wait for the perfection to begin. It will begin, too, because Kelli O'Hara is perfection, and what she presents when she sets foot onto the stage is going to be perfection, too. Leap of faith. Sit and wait. Perfection. That is the equation and that is your mission, should you choose to accept it.

In an interesting and unusual twist, the Kelli O'Hara show was late starting. It was interesting and unusual for Kelli O'Hara, and it was interesting and unusual for the 92NY. If one were at one of the smaller venues, perhaps in Hell's Kitchen, maybe on 42nd or 46th Street, there would be a reasonable expectation of a show starting fifteen or twenty or thirty minutes late - but not at 92NY. Something was up. Still, those fifteen minutes flew by and Kelli O'Hara strode out onto the stage, a picture of elegance, a vision in azure, her famous blonde tresses tumbling about her bare shoulders, and a smile of beatific benevolence splayed across a face for the ages. The show had begun and all was right with the world.

Kelli O'Hara knows how to connect to an audience. It is one of her great gifts, and she is able to do it from any vantage point and in any moment. For eighty minutes the Tony Award recipient provided her fans and followers with a musical program one might be hesitant to expect from a mere mortal but that, in the hands of Kelli O'Hara, seemed as simple as the act of breathing, as natural as blinking, and as easy as cutting an ice cream cake with a hot knife. Ms. O'Hara shifted back and forth between Broadway and jazz, country and opera, accessible soprano stylings and ethereal stratospheric soaring, and never, not once, was her connection to the audience broken. Even when special guest artist John Holiday was seated at the piano playing and singing an earth-moving solo, Kelli O'Hara sat in the bentside of the piano, dedicating her gaze to him and, thus, directing the audience to his side. Even in the quietest moments, the lady was working in service of keeping the people connected - connected to the music, connected to the lyrics, connected to other artists sharing the stage with her. Kelli O'Hara is more than just an artist telling stories, she is a hostess, a matchmaker, a conduit bringing to her audience all the goodness being created on the stage, and vice versa.

An important part of Kelli O'Hara's association with her audience is the rhetoric with which she presents herself. Affable and easygoing, down to earth and comical, graceful and peaceful, the country girl, wife, and mother talks like a country girl, wife, and mother. There was discussion from the stage of the 92nd Street Y of her youth as a farmer's daughter, of the birth of her children, of the music of her husband, Greg Naughton, whose wonderful song "The Sun Went Out" was a highlight in the musical programming of the evening. There was also a fair amount of shop talk in Kelli's concert - expository speeches about why she wanted to sing "Fable" and why a jazz treatment felt right at this moment in time, or how much of her personal story informs "To Build a Home," making it, forever and for all time, her song. Brief breakdowns explained her love of singing songs written for men, and heartfelt homages put into fresh light her late friends Rebecca Luker and Marin Mazzie. Each of these personal anecdotes illuminated O'Hara's performances of songs like "She Loves Me" and the hilarious "Not Funny." Not one moment of the evening could have been more joyful, more authentic, or more resonant, especially when it came to the craft of collaboration.

With gentle insistence, Kelli O'Hara returned, repeatedly and generously, to the names of her band members, who she, most clearly, adores and appreciates, and whose presence beside her on the stage provides a proper foundation upon which she and her storytelling can flourish and grow. The craftspersonship on display on February 16th was nothing short of the best to be found in the music industry, which is probably why Kelli O'Hara keeps Pete Donovan (bass), Emma Ford (drums), Marvin Sewell, (guitar), and Musical Director Dan Lipton (piano) with her at all times. This is a dream team, and things got even dreamier when Kelli welcomed Mr. Holiday to her playground. The two met and became instantaneous friends (as detailed through doting conversation from the stage) during the recent production of THE HOURS, and since playing is always more fun with friends, Kelli and John did a mind-blowing mini-set that included the famed Judy/Barbra Get Happy/Happy Days medley (that rivaled the original), a touching tribute to Burt Bacharach that had everyone in the hall singing "That's What Friends Are For," and one of the evening's highlights, a never-to-be-forgotten performance of the Duo des Fleurs from Léo Delibes' Lakmé - there were screams within the walls of the 92nd Street Y that one would find, more regularly, at The Metropolitan Opera. This moment and everything that came before or after it made for one of the most exceptional nights in live entertainment a person could ever have or hope for. Nothing could have made this concert better.

Well... maybe something.

That fifteen-minute late start? It was completely warranted and hilariously explained when, two numbers into the concert, Kelli O'Hara confessed, "I'm shaking... I have to tell it to you real straight. For the first time in my entire career, I just ripped myself out of a dress." A zipper stuck halfway up would not budge in either direction, leaving Kelli O'Hara half-dressed in a hip, groovy, chic outfit that had to be torn from her body so that she could slip into her backup dress, a more sedate but sophisticated evening gown. All during The Battle of the Zipper, she explained, she was anxious about the late start, not coming off as a diva, and trying to save her chic couture from destruction. And, Kelli confessed, she never brings a backup - just, on that day, she did. The honesty, candor, and humor gave Kelli's audience a little something more to take home with them, a little something special that only comes with live theater, a human moment delivered into the hands of a grateful audience that became part of an inside joke that was referenced throughout the evening, an inside joke that will, forever, connect those people to a memory of a marvelous evening.

I think everyone has a Kelli O'Hara moment that belongs only to them. For some, it came while seated at the Vivian Beaumont during a performance of South Pacific or The King And I; perhaps it originates from understanding Clara Johnson or admiring Lilli Vanessi. My Kelli O'Hara moment happened five times on Broadway at The Bridges of Madison County, and it returned, blissfully, tearfully, richly with Kelli's final song of the evening, that play's opening number. For the subscribers and ticket buyers at 92NY, their Kelli O'Hara moment might have been hearing her sing their favorite tune from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or it might have been the moment when she melded the 1931 "All of Me" with the 2012 "All of Me," making a musical ah-ha moment directly out of our dreams. Or maybe somebody's Kelli O'Hara moment was being in the room to see how easily a star can confess, make fun of, and own that they are a mass of nerves, all from having to destroy a favorite garment with a faulty zipper. Who knows where each of us will find our Kelli O'Hara moment? And it doesn't matter where we find it, any more than it matters what Kelli O'Hara has arranged for one of her concerts, or what songs she is going to sing. All that matters is that Kelli O'Hara is on the stage and that we are in the audience, ready, willing, and waiting for the magic to start.

Visit the 92NY website HERE.

THIS is the Kelli O'Hara website.

The John Holiday website can be accessed HERE.

Photos courtesy of 92NY - Photographer: Joseph Sinnott

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