Review - Julie Wilson at The Metropolitan Room & The New Century

Though Julie Wilson was certainly not the first and by all means not the last great singer to have her heart stomped upon by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's "Surabaya Johnny," there is no one I can name more deserving to claim it as their signature song. (Okay, maybe Lotte Lenya, but you know that's a special case.) Though for many years now the 83-year-old beloved cabaret star has been singing songs less and less and speaking them more and more, there are few who can match her for painting vivid word pictures and bringing complex dramatic subtext to a lyric. With pianist Christopher Denny doing a marvelous job of softly supporting her many pauses and tempo changes, Wilson's crushing performance of Marc Blitzstein's translation, played to a pin-drop silent crowd on opening night of her new show at The Metropolitan Room, is an emotionally striking portrayal of a woman who can explode with anger at the mistreatment she endures from her faithless lover while moments later barely control a sob at the admission that she still loves him. Through the years I've seen Julie Wilson sing "Surabaya Johnny" many times but her performance that night was the best I've ever seen or heard from anyone. (And as is typical of her modesty, she actually introduced the song by complimenting Donna Murphy's performance of it on Broadway in LoveMusik.) She follows it with a devilishly humored "Mack the Knife" (also Blitzstein's translation) that builds so slowly and precisely that she goes through the entire song twice in order to hit the climax. I heard no complaints.

Choosing material that, if not exactly obscure is of the less-frequently earmarked pages of the American Songbook (Cole Porter's "The Laziest Gal In Town," Rodgers and Hart's "What Is A Man?"), she can keep you hanging on a word anticipating what interpretive twist she'll bring to piece, never disappointing. Her girlish embarrassment in Porter's "Don't Look At Me That Way" and her resigned wistfulness in Francesca Blumenthal and Ronny Whyte's "If He Were Straight and I Were Young" show off sharp comic skills while she pulls off an unexpectedly sultry rendition of, of all things, Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh's "Hey, Look Me Over."

Familiar Favorites like "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "Bill" and "Blue Moon" are performed with an immediacy that makes each lyric hit the ear like a fresh new thought. There is no nostalgia in a Julie Wilson performance. At 83 she still seems to be finding new shadings for the songs she's been performing for decades.

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There's a type of play that always annoys me. I'm sure you've all come across a few of these at one time or another. It's the "serious comedy" where the playwright seems to feel the need to suddenly stop being funny once the deep and thought-provoking message behind the jokes is unveiled somewhere around the middle of Act II, then hits us with a bunch of good ones just before the final curtain. Fortunately, Paul Rudnick will have none of that. My face still hurts a bit from the two hours of laughter I enjoyed from his farcical fantasy, The New Century, a play where he can respectfully address issues involving 9/11 and AIDS without zapping the light, humorous tone so whimsically served up by director Nicholas Martin and a top-notch cast.

The first act and a half consists of three scenes, unrelated but for their theme of how straight America's increased acceptance of homosexuality can have its bizarre twists. We begin with Linda Lavin at her dry-humored best in a solo piece where she's addressing the assembled members of a Long Island chapter of the support group called Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Trans-gendered, Questioning, Curious, Creatively Concerned And Others. Dressed in the Massapequa interpretation of elegantly tailored by William Ivey Long, she proudly advises her fellow members that she is, "the most accepting, the most tolerant and the most loving mother of all time," and relates the story of how her three children came out to her, one at a time, concerning their sexual orientation, sexual identity and sexual fetishes, increasingly testing her non-conditional acceptance. Both the writing and Lavin's conflicting desires for both a traditional family life and to be seen as a model of liberal tolerance are flat out hysterical.

Peter Bartlett, New York theatre's go-to guy for celebratory portrayals of gay flamboyance, does his usual delightful job playing a cable-access television host, Mr. Charles, in the second scene. Claiming to have been kicked out of New York for being "too gay," he now broadcasts from Florida, where he gaily mocks the homosexuals who are embarrassed by his queeny personality, believing it promotes a negative stereotype. In between answering viewer letters ("Should gays be allowed to marry? Yes, to the old and wealthy."), angering his critics with demonstrations of the classic "nelly fit" and nailing a rapid-fire monologue that chronicles the history of gay theatre, he banters with his twink ward, Shane (a charismatically dim Mike Doyle), whose every entrance models an adorably sexy costume. (All except one entrance, that is.) At the scene's end Mr. Charles is approached by a station employee (Christy Pusz), whose admiration for the man inspires her to make an unusual request involving her infant son.

After intermission we're treated to a solo piece featuring Jane Houdyshell as crafts enthusiast Barbara Ellen Diggs from Decatur, Illinois, demonstrating her many kitschy creations like scrapbooks and knitted toaster cozies. And while her description of the cut-throat competitiveness of cake decorating contests is just a scream, her presentation segues to her impression of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and memories of her deceased gay son. While her boisterous performance turns momentarily quiet and touching, the play keeps a forward-thinking, positive outlook, just as Barbara Ellen does by memorializing her son through her handiwork.

The final scene has all five characters meeting in a New York hospital maternity ward, an appropriate place for the author to sum up his hope for the future. The joke behind the play's title is wonderfully contrived and the perfect capper for this warm, uplifting and extremely funny evening.

Photo of Linda Lavin by T. Charles Erickson