Review: Karen Mason Astounds 54 Below Audience With 30... AND COUNTING

A big anniversary deserves a big celebration, doesn't it? Even a months-long celebration, if it can be worked out, which is exactly what Karen Mason and Christopher Denny have been doing these days. After opening 30... AND COUNTING at Birdland in August, the longtime collaborators (and close friends) brought an encore of their show celebrating three decades of making music together to 54 Below. The twosome (working along the other member of their long standing artistic family, director Barry Kleinbort) played the Tony Award-bestowed nightclub for two nights at the beginning of the month, presenting what fellow cabaret acolyte Lorna Dallas describes as "a Master Class" in entertainment. And Lorna Dallas would be right. She would be so, so right.

30... And Counting masquerades as a casual celebration of a long term artistic relationship, a party, if you will, during which Mason and Denny perform a set of songs from various shows and recordings from over the years, but it is much more. Aside from being a testament to what a good and proper work marriage can produce, the program is yet one more example of how Karen Mason got to where she is, why she has stayed where she is, and what it takes to get where she is. With more awards and more fans than a person could actually imagine, Karen Mason is simply one of the best in the business: one of the best singers, one of the best actors, one of the best storytellers. It's more than that, though. Karen Mason is special. She's unique, she's different, she has a spark that doesn't come along every day, and any chance a person gets to see her perform is an opportunity to see how something that a person is born with can separate them from all the rest. This isn't hyperbole, exageration, or lip service, and the people who flood the theaters in which Karen performs knows it... and anyone reading this review who has never seen Karen Mason needs to do some investigation of their own.

Observe the unique and individual quality of Karen Mason's instrument. When Karen sings, the sound is unlike that of any other singer. It would be nice to say that that is true of any singer, but how many times has a song been on a radio, or on the supermarket PA system, or on a stereo at a party and you've had to Shazam it (or ask someone) to find out who was singing. That doesn't happen with Karen Mason - this is a voice of individuality and rarity, of nuance and color, of distinction and significance. Simply listening on a a recording, you can get that; in person, though, there are added benefits to hearing Karen Mason sing, not the least of which is the acting. On CD there are multitudes of emotions layered into every song recorded. In person there are flickers of feelings that play across Mason's beautiful, interesting, expressive face, feelings that don't stop at the neck, because Karen is so deeply entrenched in every performance that the sentiments expose themselves inside of Karen's posture, through the throwing out of an arm, with the flicking of a wrist or the clenching of a fist, and by the kicking back of a well-heeled foot. Sometimes eyes are closed in a moment of private reverie, while, others, they aren't just open, they are wide-open and staring into either an abyss or into every single eye in the room. Karen Mason eats the stage, she devours the lyrics, she breathes life into the musical phrases, and then she gives it all to her audience, one song at a time. It's a miracle to watch in person, quite unlike anything any other performer does on the stage which is, again, part of the Mason Mystique.

And then there is the laughter.

Karen Mason loves to laugh. Hearing her laugh is almost better than hearing her sing, and, in the right moment, under the right circumstance, yeah, it is better. She is so fun to be around, particularly when she is in her element, up on the stage, where one can observe The Diva in her Natural Habitat. It's clear that Karen and Kleinbort create a script for every show that she does, but, fortunately, she isn't married to the script. It's there. She knows it. That's why she can stray from it to joke with Chris (which she does, abundantly, notably on a clever duet they share), or talk to her audience (a framed fan photo on a front row table was fodder for some light on-the-spot conversation), or get into some playtime with bassist Tom Hubbard, or make fun of herself for losing her place in the rundown. There are no nerves here, just a good friend on a cabaret stage dishing, gossing, joshing, joking, and singing such sweet music as to make the mind explode. Being in a club while Karen Mason is singing feels like coming home.

Whether bopping to opening number "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" or shaking her hips to "Feeling Groovy" Karen brings the fun factor and the toe tapping to her program. She can sizzle with Denny's sexy arrangement combining Broadway-themed songs by Sondheim and Lieber, Stoller, Weill & Mann, or she can bring down the house with a Barry Kleinbort song parody (something one always hopes for, walking in the door). There is no style incongruous, no treatment too complicated, and no tale too tough to tell: Mason does everything, and to the Nth degree.

But it is in the ballads where the most magic lies. They can be big ballads, they can be lilting lullabies, they can be slow burners like an evening highlight that melds The Beatles' "Help" with Mr. Sondheim's "Being Alive" - a moment that, alone, was worth the ticket price. And even though very famous songs like "A House Is Not A Home" and a mashup of "Watch What Happens" and "I Will Wait For You" serve as additional highlights in her evening, Karen Mason lives, decidedly, in songs composed by the people she loves. Her performances of "Talkin' To The Moon" (by husband Paul Rolnick and Jane R. Snyder), "Time" (by director Barry Kleinbort and Joseph Thalken), and, especially, "I Made a New Friend" (by best friend Brian Lasser) were performances that seemed, particularly, to resonate with Karen, and also with her audience, one that responded to all three numbers with patent praise and ardent applause. All three of these songs require great amounts of introspection and tenderness, which Mason delivers with as much delicate ease as she serves up one of the bold and brassy numbers that have made her famous. Remember, this is one of the greatest belters in the history of the industry, and one of the greatest actors, so when Karen Mason turns it all inward for the sake of the story, it isn't just a gentle moment in storytelling - it is the biggest quiet voice in the business. It's enough to make a person hold their breath until it's time to applaud, and it's all in service of the story, which is where every Karen Mason show starts: the stories.

The history of the theater is rich with monologue plays, plays like Talking With, A... My Name Is Alice, Talking Heads, For Colored Girls... and Love, Loss, and What I Wore - plays during which a cast of actors takes turns delivering to the audience individual monologues, individual stories, one after another. Watching a Karen Mason show is like watching one of those plays, only it's one actress playing all the parts, telling all the stories. It's like a gallery or a museum, where you can stand in front of a painting, enjoying the story, then move on to the next painting. It's like those windows in the building across the street from your building, where you can see the lives of your fellow New Yorkers play out. It's like an anthology TV program that gives the viewer a new cast and a new tale with every episode. All those stories, all those songs, all those lives, all in the hands of one legendary cabaret singer.

What an weighty job for one Diva.

But don't worry. Karen Mason's got this.

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

See Karen Mason's Christmas show at Birdland on December 19th at 7 pm - reservations can be made HERE.

Visit the Karen Mason website HERE.

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

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