Everyday Rapture Broadway Reviews

Her wide-eyed manner, equal parts sexiness and sincerity, could be said to be faux-naïf. But know that there’s nothing cynical about the faux part; it’s a style choice that lets Ms. Scott perform with the sophistication that a New York audience (or rather an audience of New Yorkers) demands. And there’s no denying that when she sings, from a wildly diverse song list, she’s as polished and inventive as the worldliest cabaret artist. Having spent many nights on Broadway stages, she has no difficulty scaling up cabaret intimacy for a house as large as the American Airlines Theater; Ms. Scott naturally translates life size into bigger than life.

In the opening scene of the charmingly frenetic philosophical/autobiographical rumination-with-songs, 'Everyday Rapture,' Sherie Rene Scott classifies herself as 'one of Broadway's biggest, brightest semi-stars.' Not anymore, lady. Here is Scott, also transferred from Second Stage. She is not merely carrying this enchanting carnival -- coauthored by herself -- on her more than capable shoulders; she is the show.

With those doleful eyes, that wide permafrost smile set at a perpetual three-minutes-to-irony, and a crinkly mezzo that slingshots from brassy to bruised, Sherie Rene Scott (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Aida) has steadily established herself as New York’s leading comic divette. Does that mean we care about her life? Scott, smartly, assumes we don’t. In Everyday Rapture, a self-deconstructing micro-revue tracing her transformation from Kansas Mennonite to “Broadway semi-star,” Scott uses the blimp-hangar that is the American Airlines Theatre as an echo chamber for her wit, backed by her “Mennonettes” and an eclectic set list that ranges from Judy Garland to Tom Waits to, yes, an erotic Mr. Rogers tribute medley. Tom Kitt’s typically brilliant arrangements are half the reason for showing up; the other half is Scott, whose lambent ease with the absurd (cleverly refined by director Michael Mayer and book co-writer Dick Scanlan) makes Everyday much more than just another maudlin auto-cabaret.

'Everyday Rapture' is little changed from the Second Stage production last year off-Broadway. There was concern that it would get swallowed up in the larger American Airlines Theatre. But while less intimate now, under Michael Mayer's solid direction it remains both a witty parody of confessional shows and an earnest showcase for a gifted diva. Scott makes fun of herself as one of Broadway's brightest semi-stars, but her glittering performance proves she is a full-fledged star.

'Rapture,' which opened Thursday at the Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre, fits just fine into a large space, much bigger that off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre where the production had a successful run last year. But then the bubbly, blond, multitalented Scott has one of those quirky, expansive theater personalities that can really fill a stage.

'Everyday Rapture' is structured as a sincere memoir of growing up in 'half-Mennonite' Topeka, Kansas, encountering prejudiced anti-gay ministers, finding empowerment through song and obsessing over a variety of icons including Judy Garland, Jesus and, weirdly enough, Mr. Rogers. One surprisingly sultry medley strings together familiar Fred Rogers songs like 'It's You I Like' and 'I Like to Be Told.' At the same time, Scott's show is a relentlessly silly deconstruction of childhood innocence and egotistical diva tell-alls. Scott is not playing herself so much as parodying herself through excessive exaggeration.

This cabaret-style show, which fills in the end-of-season slot at Roundabout Theatre Company after the revival of 'Lips Together, Teeth Apart' was indefinitely postponed, breaks all the one-person-show rules. There's more than one actor in the cast; the witty script, by Scott and Dick Scanlan, doesn't follow a clear chronological line; and Scott wisely avoids playing all the other characters in her story. That tale traces Scott's journey from a repressive Mennonite upbringing in Topeka, Kan. to 'numerous second leads in Broadway musicals.' Employing a dry, ironic tone, Scott is not afraid to include herself among her satiric targets as she skewers the narrow fundamentalism of her hometown, the pain of being a misfit in high school, and the obsessions of musical theater fanatics.

Many of us have fond memories of watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as preschoolers. But did you know that, for some viewers, Fred Rogers' neighborly lessons held messages of social and sexual empowerment — that he was, in fact, 'the father of free love?' This is one of the more intriguing revelations in Everyday Rapture, the slight but charming revue that opened Thursday at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre.

'Everyday Rapture' is an easygoing end to a frantic Broadway season. This is Sherie Rene Scott's likable 90-minute, semiautobiographical musical - an Off-Broadway hit last summer at Second Stage and now the Roundabout Theatre's last-minute savior after the revival of 'Lips Together, Teeth Apart' crumbled with the abrupt departure of Megan Mullally.

The musical interludes are uniformly splendid. Backed by her two Mennonettes (Lindsay Mendez, Betsy Wolfe), Scott is a stylist in full control of her instrument. The low-key arrangements by Tom Kitt ('Next to Normal') only enhance her amalgam of precision and warmth. And yet the show sometimes feels out of joint. In a smaller setting, 'Everyday Rapture' achieved a near-miraculous balance between narcissistic bravado, self-mocking and sentimentality. But the last weighs heavier here, and the inspirational tidbits take over. If there's a lesson in this, it's that corn should stay in Kansas.

Problematic with such a show is whether to accept its oddities as peculiar but true or to question them as fabrications usurping the privilege of facts. The show’s solution is to postulate a heroine called “Sherie Rene,” who both is and isn’t Scott. To which I say that “Everyday Rapture” both is and isn’t a show.

But for all the script's funny one-liners, vignettes like Scott's account of losing her virginity to a Times Square street magician don't have much resonance. A lengthy segment centering on an obsessive teenage fan (Eamon Foley) who posted a video on YouTube of himself lip-synching to one of her songs is more creepy than amusing. Scott, accompanied by backup singers Lindsay Menez and Betsy Wolfe, handles the musical and narrative demands of the show in fine fashion. But 'Rapture' comes across as overly precious and lacking the thematic heft that would justify its unexpected Broadway berth.

Of course, the Sherie Rene Scott who describes herself on stage as, 'one of Broadway's biggest and brightest semi-stars,' in the enormously entertaining variety hour (and a half) she calls Everyday Rapture, is actually a character created by the Sherie Rene Scott who co-authored the smart, semi-autobiographical musical with Dick Scanlan. Which details are factual and which are, shall we say, enhanced, are for them to know and for us to not give a damn about as we're laughing, tapping our toes and enjoying the fizzy charms of this impeccably funny, semi-funked up chanteuse.

Of course, the Sherie Rene Scott who describes herself on stage as, 'one of Broadway's biggest and brightest semi-stars,' in the enormously entertaining variety hour (and a half) she calls Everyday Rapture, is actually a character created by the Sherie Rene Scott who co-authored the smart, semi-autobiographical musical with Dick Scanlan. Which details are factual and which are, shall we say, enhanced, are for them to know and for us to not give a damn about as we're laughing, tapping our toes and enjoying the fizzy charms of this impeccably funny, semi-funked up chanteuse.