Review - Broadway Winners

If I were delusional enough to think my scribblings could turn an unknown into a star overnight, then I'd be writing these words fully confident that by tomorrow morning every Broadway producer in town would want to sign a young musical comedy actress named Oakley Boycott. Yes, Oakley Boycott is her actual name and as a performer she's as unique as her moniker. I first saw her two years ago at one of Town Hall's Broadway's Rising Stars concerts, where she floored the place as a rhythmically-challenged singer awkwardly pounding her way through John Kroner's "Where's The Beat." Since then it seems her New York appearances have been limited to Scott Siegel's Town Hall concerts and doing concert musicals for Mel Miller's Musicals Tonight!

Very tall, very thin and very blonde, Ms. Boycott seems fully aware that she does not blend in with the crowd and is very happy to stick out. She combines classic Hollywood confidence and elegance with an aggressively boisterous sense of comedy; a sort-of punk rock Cyd Charrisse. At Broadway Winners, a concert of songs that, either individually or as a score, were honored with some award or another (and was the opening concert of this year's Town Hall Summer Broadway Festival), Boycott's performance of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein Weimar Kabaret spoof, "He Vas My Boyfriend," was sung (and sometimes shouted) with a maniacal twinge that illuminated her character's combination of lust and fear for her abusive beau. The generally older Town Hall subscription crowd, many of whom I suspect saw the likes of beloved clowns like Judy Holliday and Barbara Harris on Broadway, roared with laughter and gave her the kind of cheering ovation usually reserved for better-known names.

It's still very early in her career, but, as a performer, Oakley Boycott is the kind of outlandish talent that Broadway used to harvest and write shows around; the sort of performer that has no better use for anyone but to be musical comedy star.

But that's not to say her few minutes on stage was the only dazzling moment of the talent-packed evening. In an era where less-qualified performers take the above-the-title spot in many musicals, Scott Siegel regularly displays the abundance of talent that Broadway sadly underutilizes.

Take the charismatic baritone Marc Kudisch, for example, who regularly uses these concerts as opportunities to experiment and do the unexpected. With music director Beth Ertz and her band, Kudisch accompanied himself on guitar for a rockabilly rendition of "Bless Your Beautiful Hide" from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers that could have been mistaken for a Carl Perkins classic. Later, he followed with a more youthful and vigorous Tevye than most have seen contemplating, "If I Were A Rich Man." It was a hearty, robust performance and a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the role.

Christina Bianco, a perky comic and impressionist who has done some stellar work in both Forbidden Broadway and Newsical, was also the recipient of roaring laughter and applause as she performed "Cabaret" as a succession of vocal divas, including Barbra Streisand, Bernadette Peters, Judy Garland, Patti LuPone, Julie Andrews, Celine Dion and, her showstopper, a remarkably accurate Kristin Chenoweth.

Bianco also had a charming duet of "Your Just In Love" with Scott Coulter, who earlier in the evening presented a stunningly delicate "The Sound of Music" to a pin-drop attentive crowd.

I normally wouldn't mention that Tom Wopat, one of the truly terrific saloon singers we still have around, went up on the lyrics of "The Best Is Yet To Come" a couple of times, but his self-effacing humor in dealing with the situation was so warm and enjoyable that he turned his troubles into a memorable moment, like his perfectly phrased unamplified performance of "Send In The Clowns."

The delightful Eddie Korbich celebrated the most recent victory for marriage equality by tweaking one of Sheldon Harnick's "I Love A Cop" lyrics to, "I can see how far this will carry him / And we live in New York State, I can marry him." His lovely "So In Love' was performed unamplified. The evening's director, the versatile Alexander Gemignani, opened the show with a funny/nerdy "She Loves Me" that was full of quirky textures and then toned it down for a simple and sincere "Not While I'm Around." Likewise, Stephanie Umoh displayed a comical side with "A Lovely Day To Be Out of Jail" and more intense dramatics with "Easy As Life."

Special guest Larry Gatlin recalled his stint in The Will Rogers Follies with "Look Around" and then tipped his hat to Gemignani, who played Jean Valjean in the Broadway revival of LES MISERABLES, before a soft and tender "Bring Him Home."

In anticipation of tonight's 5th annual Broadway's Rising Stars concert, the evening also included appearances from talented performers from past editions, whose careers are still works in progress: Dara Hartman ("My Funny Valentine"), Joshua Isaacs ("Finishing The Hat"), Kristin Dausch ("The Music That Makes Me Dance" unamplified) and Jon Fletcher ("Why, God, Why?")

Photos by Stephen Sorokoff: Top: Oakley Boycott; Bottom: Scott Coulter & Christina Bianco.

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Those who only know Arthur Laurents as the bookwriter for two of Broadway's greatest musicals would be fascinated to read how, as author Bob Herzberg describes it, the young playwright's drama, Home of The Brave, which opened in December of 1945, was Broadway's first post-war production to criticize institutionalized bigotry in the United States military.

As an American Jew, Laurents' story was based on the anti-Semitism he encountered while serving as a soldier. Despite its brief run of 69 performances, the play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the film rights were quickly snagged by Stanley Kramer.

However, since Hollywood had already seen a pair of recent features about anti-Semitism, Kramer decided to turn the protagonist from Jewish to black, despite the fact the United States military was racially segregated during the war and the events of the play, as replicated for the film, could not have possibly happened to a black man.

The primary focus of Herzberg's book, The Left Side of the Screen, is an exploration of Hollywood's handling of communist and left-wing ideology from the days of the first talkies into the first decade of the 21th Century. But a good deal of that exploration has to do with the freedom playwrights had to be critical of the government on Broadway, which, if a play was adapted into a film at all, was tempered by the film industry into expressions that would be considered more in the national public's comfort zone.

The book describes how, Clifford Odets, a registered member of the Communist Party, followed the success of the pro-Marxist Awake and Sing! with a little-known piece, Til The Day I Die. Set in 1935 Berlin, the play featured Elia Kazan as a sympathetic Communist agitator and Lee J. Cobb as a Nazi police detective. With snippets of dialogue that seem almost laughable today, Herzberg demonstrates how Odets' condemnation of the Nazi system included heavy implications that two Nazi officers are gay. ("Hitler is lonely, too," one says to comfort the other.)

Arthur Miller plays, and their subsequent film versions, like All My Sons and A View From The Bridge are examined in their own political and social contexts, as well as the works of artists who were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

If you're like Sally Bowles and politics bores you, keep in mind that Herzberg's entertaining writing style, while packed with details, is light and conversational, sometimes sarcastic and strongly opinionated, making it a fun and informative read for both nights in dimly lit literary watering holes and sunny afternoons lounging at Brighton Beach.

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