Tag: entertainment

Review: Marilyn Maye

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There is nothing more magical than seeing the marvelous Marilyn Maye in an intimate nightclub. Johnny Mathis, in a birthday message to Marilyn a few years back, said “it’s just you and me now, kid!” Mathis meant that they are the two jazz-pop singers of the ’50s and ’60s still actively performing. Mathis maintains an active tour schedule, as does Maye, and neither has fallen far from the peak of their powers. Maye just did Carnegie Hall!

Back in those halcyon days, Ella Fitzgerald called Maye “the greatest white female singer in the world” (which of course allowed Ella to be the very greatest). I can think of no other singer who possesses Maye’s combination of interpretive ability, rhythmic verve, and vocal range. Maye is a singer worthy of being included in the company of Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn or Blossom Dearie, and her phrasing is the finest I’ve heard in that style from a living female singer. This is a classic act in every sense of the phrase. Maye exquisitely tailors her style of singing to the individual song, smooth for the ballads, swinging for the standards, and truly gritty for the bluesier numbers.

Her new show, “Come Celebrate” is a selection of her favorite songs, curated to address the themes of love, and, tangentially, smiles and spring. She includes one of her most requested songs, “Guess Who I Saw Today”; she said to her fans “you have all heard this something like 12,000 times” but then looked at a couple of fresh-faced queerlings in the front row and teased, “well maybe not you!”

Maye appeared on Johnny Carson’s edition of “The Tonight Show” a total of 76 times, a record not likely ever to be beaten by any other singer with any other host. Her run at 54 Below returns us to “Café Society” or what she likes to call “Paradise Cafes” after a song she does (but not in this set). If you love classic songs sung like they’re meant to be sung, it doesn’t get any better than this. My very highest recommendation.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Shucked

On By dramaqueennycIn Broadway, musical, review, theatreLeave a comment

Stupidly clever, relentlessly hilarious. This is the kind of joyful “feel good” musical we need so sorely right now! Shucked follows Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler) and Beau (Andrew Durand), young lovebirds who live in the isolated rural Cobb County, a place whose main product is (you guessed it) corn. When the crop dries up, our heroes are forced to postpone their wedding. Maizy resolves to find a solution to the blight, and heads to (of all places) Tampa. In that bustling metropolis she meets shyster Gordy Jackson (John Behlmann), who claims he can solve the problem, but clearly has ulterior motives.

Innerbichler, Durand and Behlmann anchor the show with rock-sold performances, but the most dazzling moments come from supporting roles. Alex Newell plays whiskey distiller Lulu with lots of brass and bluster, and their roof-raising belting in “Independently Owned” truly stops the show, getting the song its own spontaneous standing ovation.

Above all it’s Kevin Cahoon as corn-fed philosopher Peanut. It’s a big help that super-witty bookwriter Robert Horn gives Peanut the most absurdly funny lines in the show, but it’s Cahoon’s crack timing that turns funny into uproarious. The primary goal of Shucked is pure fun; that’s not to say it doesn’t have earnest thoughts on its mind, but no comedy can really succeed with out some serious themes at their heart.

The unfailingly tuneful score by Clark and McAnally seamlessly blends country grit with Broadway splash. Choreographer Sarah O’Gleby works some real magic with things such as barrels, and of course ears of corn. Director Jack O’Brien pulls everything together with the sure hand of a veteran professional. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Jackie Hoffman

On By dramaqueennycIn cabaret, reviewLeave a comment

This lady is monstrously funny. Jackie Hoffman has named her latest show “It’s Over. Who Has Weed?”, and when she she says “it’s over” she means everything! In the opening song, also called “It’s Over”, she says (I have to paraphrase because it went by so fast): “Before the pandemic the questions were, ‘who do I want to fuck? Who has weed?’ Now it’s: “Oh my god! We’re heading towards civil war! Or is it WW III? We’re all going to die because Earth’s becoming uninhabitable! WHO THE FUCK HAS WEED?!?”

To use the title of one of her previous club acts, the kvetching continues, yes it does indeed. Hoffman’s every last frustration and annoyance provides terrific grist for her comic mill. In most of her previous acts she complained about the state of her career. However, in the last few years she has played a series of recurring roles on hit TV shows, most recently Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. That show shoots in Vancouver, and she sings a tongue-in cheek tribute to the city.

What Hoffman does kvetch about is her housing in Vancouver, especially in a song named “Beware the Airbnb Booking”. The apartment looked good on the website, but when she got there she found out the neighborhood “is where the term skid row was born!” She states that the area is filled with junkies, “But it’s Canada so they’re polite junkies.” There are also lots of birds in the area but the various species “fight each other like the Jets and Sharks in West Side Story,” which she goes on to hilariously demonstrate.

I’m letting you in on some of the jokes to give you the flavor of the show, but I’m just fine with that, because the laughs are a mile a minute with this one. And even though the first song strikes a note of hopelessness, but at the end she does express reasons to hope. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Justin Vivian Bond

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“Being a cabaret singer is all I wanted out of life. And it’s all I’ve gotten out of life! So, yay me!” So says Justin Vivian Bond. This ambition was hatched at a very young age when her parents took her to see glamorous swing singer Helen O’Connell. Seeing the sequined chanteuse jazzily croon on the stage of the Contemporary Hotel in Orlando, she quite straightforwardly thought “That’s what I want to do!”

This trans legend is among the most unique interpreters of song: she can go from tender vulnerability to smirking irony to howling rage, sometimes in the same song. Her taste is impeccable, and she approaches her selections with the touch of a very careful curator. A curator, that is, who finds what is most explosive in the art they’re presenting, and then promptly detonates it. Justin Vivian Bond is a tower of song – mysterious, imposing, beautiful, powerful.

The title of JVB’s current show “Nose Gays” is apropos of nothing, except maybe of the majestic profile photo above. It’s a bit mellower than usual. She says “I’m just singing songs I want to sing. Just imagine that I’m singing in a foreign language, and attach to them…whatever you want!” The show finds Viv reprising songs from various points in her career, Joni Mitchell’s “Woman of Heart and Mind” from early San Francisco days, Kate Bush’s “Under the Ivy” from her most recent Christmas show, and several more. Her encore is a Patti Smith song (I won’t say which one) which she delivers in a full lioness roar.

One of the best features of all of Bond’s shows is her acidly funny, stream of consciousness, between-song patter. As always Bond is hilariously entertaining, wildly imaginative and vividly expressive. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Bad Cinderella

On By dramaqueennycIn Broadway, musical, review, theatre1 Comment

CAMP AS CHRISTMAS!!! In particular, Carolee Carmello as the Wicked Stepmother plays it like the most over-the-top drag queen – such fun. And completely in tune with the joyously crazy tone of the show. The energy is high, the designs eye-poppingly colorful, the general feeling very gay (there’s even an ensemble number with shirtless hunks dancing like they are in a male strip club show!). And the score is peak Andrew Lloyd Webber – his scores can be hit or miss for me, and this is definitely in the hit category, to my mind his most tuneful this century. Sexy, silly, frolicsome, mischievous, just the kind of light entertainment we need in these dark days.

So why is this Cinderella “bad?” Mostly she is punk as fuck, and so self-possessed. The plot follows all the “beats” of the traditional Cinderella plot, but there is a twist every single time, some of them quite feminist and queer. Lindedy Genao in the title role is sassy as hell, and belts with the best to the back of the balcony. She may have too many ballads, but the powerful way she sings them makes it worth it.

Bad Cinderella is set in a fanciful version of belle epoque France that has elements as medieval as broadswords and as 21st Century as bikini waxes. The town in which Cinderella live is called Belleville, a town as obsessed with beauty as, say, Instagram or TikTok. Director Laurence Connor s things at a very lively clip, which just makes the camp even campier. Fun, fun, fun. Recommened.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Good Night, Oscar

On By dramaqueennycIn Broadway, play, review, theatreLeave a comment

If Sean Hayes doesn’t get a Tony nom for this, it’s a shanda! In Good Night, Oscar Hayes plays Oscar Levant, a composer / songwriter, great friend of George Gershwin, successful concert pianist and conductor. But he was probably best known for his quick, acid wit. Throughout the 1950s he was a frequent guest on all sorts of television shows, and for two years hosted a show of his own.

He was also seriously mentally ill. He was certainly what we today call bipolar, also definitely obsessive compulsive, and after a heart attack in 1952 addicted to a panoply of painkillers, Demerol being a particular favorite. Hayes, long since established as one of the greatest comic actors of our time, predictably kills Levant’s witticisms.

The most thrilling part, however, is how he portrays Levant’s pain, the cost of his genius. Hayes proves himself to be a titanically good dramatic actor as he delves boldly into Levant’s darker side. Good Night, Oscar portrays Levant’s appearance on The Tonight Show in 1958, when Jack Paar (Ben Rappaport), a raconteur on a par (pardon me for the raconteur-ish pun) with Levant, was the host. Much of the drama is corralling the wild child Levant into a pre-show ability to simply hold it together for national television.

Playwright Doug Wright captures Levant in full multi-colored madness, in all his complex unbalanced glory. Perhaps most touchingly he shows how haunted Levant is by the memory of Gershwin (John Zdrojeski) – his biggest hit was his recording of George’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, which was requested to the exclusion of anything he himself had written. Perhaps most spectacularly, Hayes plays piano with great virtuosity, in the style of Levant himself!!! Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Colin Quinn: Small Talk

On By dramaqueennycIn Off-Broadway, play, review, theatreLeave a comment

Colin Quinn is one of the better comics doing political satire; he communicates highly complicated ideas through the most mundane and absurdly funny examples. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his previous shows – especially his stand-up “history of the world” Long Story Short which made it to Broadway – all of which which brought enormous issues wittily down to a comprehensible human scale. So I got excited when I heard about this new show about the nominally more minor titular subject of Small Talk. Even though it addresses a simple idea, Quinn still draws examples from a hugely eclectic number of sources, some of which are indeed from history modern and ancient.

Quinn advocates for the lost art of talking with strangers, and making a connection. Oddly enough, me and my husband did exactly that with the next table\when we were grabbing a quick meal before the show, Quinn hits home with his off-hand approach, sometimes speaking volumes with a simple scoffing noise.

His main point is that in this era of social media, the one-to-one human contact gets missed. Instead of trying to make a friend with the person next to you, people throw often pointless hate online. He’s right, this is definitely a wrong turn. To quote: “If you post more than 5 times a day you should be in a 72-hour psychiatric hold.” He applies the same comic logic to gun control:“When people come in to buy a gun, no waiting period but first give us three references. Then we Face Time those people and go, ‘Hey, your friend Joe Schmo wants to buy a gun,’ and if they go, ‘Really?!’ They’re not getting a gun.”

At the end there is a lovely tribute to his late friend Norm MacDonald, whom he credits as the best small talker he ever knew, reading the room and saying contradictory things to left wing and right wing people he was chatting with. A nice coda to a very entertaining and insightful show.

Quinn’s manner is engagingly off-hand – this is bigger and smarter than your usual stand-up, but it never totally leaves that sphere. He’s a sharp-eyed wise-cracker, his take decidedly coming from a working class point of view, or at least from the point of view that’s been formed by being around working class people. Small Talk is jaunty and fun with a biting edge, a thought-provoking good time that I can easily recommend.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro

On By dramaqueennycIn cabaret, reviewLeave a comment

This show is probably the gayest thing to come to the Cafe Carlyle, a stage that has seen Bobby Short and Isaac Mizrahi cross its boards. The famously lewd and frisky “Emcee” of Cabaret and Club Cumming, and the deep voiced host of NPR’s All Things Considered – on the face of it they seem to be quite the odd couple. But get them onstage singing “Bosom Buddies” from Mame and it quickly all makes sense.

Alan Cumming in his own way is as politically committed as journalist Ari Shapiro, and Shapiro is one hell of a singer in his own right, and once you find out about Shapiro’s Portland clubwear from the 1990s, the similarity comes into sharp focus (embarrassingly it sounds like something I once wore; Ari probably looked better in it).

Also, as they themselves point out, they are both very much in the business (no, the art) of telling compelling stories. And so here we are in a show they call “Och & Oy! A Considered Cabaret” – and yes they do both make jokes and get very serious about their respective Scottish and Jewish heritages. Also part of the joy of the show is their spontaneous interactions which are often hilarious, and just as often thoughtful.

Cumming is easily one of the most charismatic performers in America today, his take on songs, so very fresh, his singing as bold, big and beautiful as can be. A highlight is Alan singing a song Kristin Chenoweth made famous “Tyler the Latte Boy” by way of emphasizing that being married does not preclude outside crushes and flirtation. Cumming’s patter is nothing if not frank – sometimes even filthy – and the show as a whole is very emotionally direct, which makes for an experience that is both intimate and expansive.

Shapiro, for somebody most people think of as quite earnest, turns out to be every bit as naughty as Alan, and funny, and tuneful. He sings the Bette Midler song “Laughing Matters” which details the horrors of the world, and unfortunately (as he points out) is even more topical now than it was when Bette recorded it in 1998. The other side of the song is that, with all that’s going on, indeed laughing does really matter. And as incisive as these two are about so many things, they are both masterful at making us laugh. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Pictures from Home

On By dramaqueennycIn Broadway, play, review, theatreLeave a comment

A play based on a photo memoir – Sharr White’s Pictures from Home is both utterly unique and very much in the tradition of American family drama. Professor of photography Larry Sultan (Danny Burstein) starts off analyzing photographs from his childhood in Brooklyn, and then begins visiting his parents in their San Fernando Valley home, taking pictures of them in their later years. His irascible father Irving (Nathan Lane) is a retired razor blade company executive, his mother Jean (Zoë Wanamaker) a still working real estate broker.

As you might be able to tell by the cast, Pictures from Home skews toward the comedic, with Lane in particular taking Irving’s cantankerous personality as an opportunity for laughs. Burstein’s is the most understated performance, as Larry doesn’t even know what he’s looking for through his camera lens. A better understanding of his parents’ “American Dream” perhaps? Or what that dream even means – is it at all a positive thing? Wanamaker is also terrific, especially in silent reactions to Irving and Larry’s conflicted relationship that speak volumes.

We see projections of Sultan’s pictures of the actual Irving and Jean, which gives added depth to our understanding of Larry’s search for meaning beneath these images of American family life. Director Bartlett Sher’s touch here is deft and light, mostly getting out of the way of White’s skillful writing and this magnificent cast. Pictures from Home is not a high-impact show; aside from Irving’s prickly comic outbursts, it is a very subtle piece of work, with Burstein’s layered portrayal of Larry carrying most of the thematic weight. Recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: John Pizzarelli

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So, my father was a great fan of two genius jazz pianists, George Shearing and Don Shirley. As a kid I would sometimes confuse them, and then my father would say, with the always present twinkle in his eye, “All you need to remember, son, is both their names begin with ‘Shhhh’.” Just listen. And I did. The subject of guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli’s latest (and as always brilliant) show is Shearing.

Pizzarelli always scales the heights of cabaret’s jazzier side with amazing musicianship and élan, and among that musical “mountain-climbing” he has in fact been influenced by Shearing, and even did an album with him some time ago. As a matter of fact, not long after, he brought Shearing onstage for an encore with him at the Cafe Carlyle, where he is doing his tribute to George.

John has a straightforward, but still astonishing, sort of virtuosity – his particular genius is in his chordal improvisations, finding hidden musical meanings in the most familiar of standards. Also, as measure of his attention to detail, he replicates Shearing’s tendency to arrange unison runs between guitar, piano and vibraphone, an unique and very elegant sound.

It’s common courtesy in a jazz setting to applaud for a bit after everybody’s solos, and indeed bandleader John frequently points at one of the instrumentalists as if to say “give it up for so-and-so”! More often in this show, though, the onslaught of flashy jazziness is so relentless that you don’t applaud for fear of missing something amazing. Neither jazz nor cabaret gets much better than this.

For tickets, click here.


For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.