From June 2009:

Most famous for playing Boy George in Broadway’s “Taboo,” transplanted Scotsman Euan Morton is homesick, and in true show biz fashion, he’s doing a cabaret act to deal with it! 2009 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, Scotland’s most famous songwriter and poet. To celebrate, Scotland is calling ’09 the Year of the Homecoming.

To mark this great occasion and to bring a wee piece of home to New York City, Euan is performing his new Scottish-themed one man show, “Caledonia: Songs for the Homecoming” through the last few weeks in June. I caught up with Euan to ask a few questions about the show and what he’s been up to.

How did this act come about?

It’s a departure from the other cabaret concerts I’ve done. I used to sing all of these Scottish folk songs as a kid — my mum’s a singer and she taught us — but I’ve never done this stuff in public. I’m doing a lot of traditional Scottish music, as well as modern stuff like Annie Lennox’s “Why” and “500 Miles” by the Proclaimers. We did it for the first time last night and people really seem to enjoy it. It wasn’t even my idea: I was hanging out with Dessie Moynihan from the Shubert Organization. I told her it was the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns’s birth, and Dessie suggested the idea of a Scottish celebration concert — I owe it all to her.

You’re known for playing good-hearted but scandalously outrageous characters — is any of that on display in “Caledonia”?

I can’t go as crazy in cabaret as I can when I’m playing Caligula or Boy George or any of those other riotous men. But the part of me that goes into those characters is definitely something I enjoy playing with onstage. My director Lee Armitage and I are much more organized with this show than other concerts I’ve done before. We’ve actually written a script out, which I haven’t done often before. It’s a really good thing, because my mind sometimes wanders and I say stupid things and repeat myself just before, you know, a tender ballad. Plus, it gives us a chance to consciously draw out those parts of my personality you mentioned, which definitely contrast me with a more traditional cabaret performer.

You’re missing Scotland?

Not just Scotland! I haven’t left the USA since March 2005 — for me that’s strange because from London or Scotland it’s so easy to travel. You can get to Spain for $120 round trip, Amsterdam $80, France $40 and I used to leave the UK four to six times a year. So I miss all those places. I have a reason to go home next year. My little sister is getting married in June 2010; by that time it’ll be six and a half years.

Any dream projects in the works?

I’ve talked about writing my own musical. I’ve always loved the Carpenters. And I’m even more fascinated by the darkness and addictions that come with success. I wanted to write a show about a boy who was obsessed with the Carpenters and ended up living like Karen did. Because no one ever talks about male anorexia. It’s actually much more common than we think. Then I realized he didn’t need to be a Carpenters fan, that in fact that cheapened both the boy’s problem and the memory of Karen. You could just do a show about male eating disorders. People have pooh-poohed the idea but now comes “Next to Normal,” bringing bipolarity to Broadway, so perhaps that’s something I’ll get back into. Writing-wise now I’m working on writing a movie — it’s about a woman who was a fighter in the French Resistance in World War II, who became a leader in it. There were a handful of women like her in the Resistance, but they are rarely recognized. She’s now 105 and she practices the art of the “healing hands.” I’m also involved in two new musicals, leading roles. “Behind the Limelight,” which is the life of Charlie Chaplin and the other is “Caligula,” which I did in the first season of NYMF. Both of those are definitely dream projects, even though, like “Caledonia,” they weren’t necessarily an original idea of mine.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

From April 2009:

Singer Lesley Gore, a through and through New Yorker – born in Brooklyn and raised in Tenafly, New Jersey – was discovered by music legend Quincy Jones and recorded “It’s My Party” when she was just 16 years old. In the years that followed, she helped create the soundtrack of the 1960s with over two dozen chart hits, including the proto-feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me,” becoming the most commercially successful solo artist of the “Girl Group” era.  A few years back, Gore also quietly came out as a lesbian by serving as a host on the PBS series In the Life.

The 1960s legend will be doing a breif stint at Feinstein’s at the Regency, May 5 to 9. She’ll perform a selection of her 1960s chart-toppers as well as contemporary pop classics.  I chatted with her about her plans for the show at Feinstein’s, the growing acceptance of gays and one of her most resonant songs

Any particular plans for Feinstein’s?

There are few wonderful clubs in New York, you’ve got the Carlyle and Feinstein’s. I’ve visited Feinstein’s, I’ve seen a lot of wonderful talent there and always aspired to play there. In terms of figuring out a general direction for the show, I know it’s a room I need to cater to. At the same time, I do come in the door with a couple of hits, which probably people are buying a ticket or two to hear, so I’m obliged to do those. I’ve got a number of songs that I’ve loved and which I’ve been performing over the last 44 years. I’m putting all of those into a context that’s right for Feinstein’s and right for Lesley. I think it should be a great show! We nod to the songs of the Great American songbook that Michael Feinstein does so beautifully, we do a couple of what I call “modern classics,” and I get an opportunity to sing a couple of ballads, which I think every singer enjoys more than an up-tempo song.

What to do you think of the state of gay rights?

I frankly don’t care whether I get married or not, but I think our civil rights depend on it. I think it’s important, not so much to be married to your partner as to be given the civil rights that married couples get, so I’m on that bandwagon. I think it’s 2009, I really don’t think that straight people have a problem with gay people any longer. But of course I live in New York. I don’t know what’s going on in Kansas and Utah, but I imagine they’re a little bit behind us—and its time to catch up!  I know it takes some people a little longer. They come to this with histories, apprehensions, fears because they don’t understand. The more people understand that they probably already know a gay person, and in fact adore them, then the better off we’re gonna be—and that may take awhile, but it’s happening, for sure. By the time I shut my eyes for good I’ll have seen a real difference, I think, and I’m happy about that.

Could you talk a little bit about your protofeminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me”?

When I first heard that song at the age of 16 or 17, feminism wasn’t quite a going proposition yet. Some people talked about it, but it wasn’t in any kind of state at the time. My take on that song was: I’m 17, what a wonderful thing, to be able to stand up on a stage and shake your finger at people and sing you don’t own me. I thought of it as a humanist anthem—I could see a guy saying that to a girl as well. As time went on the feminist movement did grab a hold of it, and frankly I’m very proud of that. It’s the one song that I do every time I’m on a stage, more often than not it’s the song I close with, because frankly in all my years I’ve never found a song that’s stronger than that. It’s imbued with something different every time I sing it. It’s a great song, so when you really think about it, different things pop up all the time. It has a lot of layers which I think is the test of a good song.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

[Note: This interview from February 2009 marked the first time that Ann Hampton Callaway had candidly discussed her life as a lesbian. It originally ran in the New York Blade]

Ann Hampton Callaway—the multiplatinum-selling pop and jazz singer/songwriter best known for writing and singing the theme from the TV hit “The Nanny” as well as songs for Barbra Streisand and others—will perform at Dizzy Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center from February 17 to March 1 to celebrate her new CD “At Last.”

She has now started talking about her personal life in public for the first time. She and her partner Kari live in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Ann likes to say “Ann Hampton Callaway’s new CD is coming out on February 3 and so is she!!!”

So your CD came out and so have you!

[Laughs.] I don’t remember when I thought about that phrasing. It feels good! Free at last!

Why now?

This was a long time in the happening. I’ve been out to my friends and my peers for many, many years. But I was also with a previous partner who didn’t want me to be out, and I had to respect her wishes. But in the past year I’ve been much more involved in political activities, trying to elect a president who can bring about change, realizing the struggles we have with Prop 8. I also realized how short life is, and how important it is to give yourself a chance to be the most honest and real you. It seemed like the extra step I needed to take not only as an individual but as a citizen. I think that artists have the opportunity to offer inspiration to people who may still need it and I think even thought we’ve come a long way in this community, we still have a long way to go.

So you had one of those “Obama moments” where…

Yeah, I’ve been Obamacized! [Laughs.] But you know I also turned 50 last year, and as always those big birthdays are occasions to be philosophical. I’m always trying to encourage my friends to be themselves, achieve their greatest potential, to live out their dreams to get past their fears. I’m a pretty good advocate for my friends, but I think sometimes you’re the last person to do that for yourself. And also I’m finally with a partner who feels like “the one,” who is comfortable with people, the public, with my expansiveness as an artist and a person; so we can share a much more open life together because she’s comfortable with it, and that makes all the difference in the world.

How long have you been together?

We are actually celebrated our two year anniversary of realizing we could be together at the beginning of this month. It was love at first sight, and we were both in unhappy relationships and neither one of us really knew that there was anything possible between us. I ended my relationship—that should have ended a few years before. It took us a while to realize we could be more than friends. When it finally became evident, it was an incredibly joyous occasion. I knew right away the moment I saw her “This is the person I’ve been looking for my entire life.”

Now back to that CD that also “came out”…

Yeah! It’s so personal about Kari and me; the last song on the CD is “On My Way to You,” a reflective look at how do we get to the person that we love. All the ups and downs, the delicious experiences, the disappointments and the yearning. I wanted the CD to be a cinematic journey on the way to love, starting with a question and ending with an answer. It expresses a lot of feelings about love in my life.

And Kari is the inspiration?

Yes, she has been incredibly inspiring to me. She’s the most big-hearted, loving supportive person. She’s not at all intimidated by my busy life or my fans or the sheer amount of people that come into my life. She loves people too, and she loves travelling. It’s a beautiful life that we’re able to share together. I never thought this was possible. I’m hopping on an airplane every other day, and that’s not a problem.

Difficult and glamorous life.

Exactly! Like good high heels. [Laughs.]

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

From May 2008:

When asked to describe cabaret personality Mark Nadler, I always return to an image of him performing that’s burned in my memory. At one point during “American Rhapsody” a long-running Gershwin tribute he did with KT Sullivan (herself described by The New Yorker “as vocally, comically and theatrically assured as contemporary cabaret performers get”), Nadler, in white tie and tails, leapt from floor to piano bench, tap-dancing madly, singing and keeping steady eye contact with the audience—all this while playing a complex passage on the piano without even glancing at the keys. The man sweats talent from every pore.

I’m guessing he’ll be doing similar pyrotechnical performing for “A Swell Party: RSVP Cole Porter” which reunites him with Sullivan at Town Hall on June 9.  This special musical evening event, commemorating Cole Porter’s birthday, also features Loren Schoenberg. To find out a little more about this tribute to one of the greatest gay songwriters of the last century, I got in touch with Nadler in Chicago, where he’s performing a run of his new solo act “Russian on the Side.”

So, just how gay is “A Swell Party”?

Cole Porter’s songs are all written in code—that’s what he had to do at that time. I find it very sexy to have to be covert. There is one moment toward the end of the show that’s overtly gay. Also, there are lots of lyrics in the songs that are pretty blatant: the lesbian references are more blatant than the ones about gay men—for example, in “Kate the Great” he says: “She made the maid who made the room.” Fun stuff. In this show we do not tell the story of Cole Porter’s life except through his songs—wherein he tells plenty. We have almost no patter at all in this show—it’s about his songs and is almost completely sung through. 

I know you like to “multi-track” your cabaret shows, structuring several layers of meaning in interlocking ways.  What’s Mark Nadler’s subtext for “A Swell Party”—anything we should look out for?

Well, you’re absolutely right about that. What “Swell Party” is about for me is what Porter’s songs and life are about: ambivalence. For every aspect of his life, including his homosexuality, there was an equally strong opposing force. That’s why his songs are so very complicated and that’s the excitement of them. He’s probably the most complex composer, musically speaking, of all of the writers of the Great American Songbook. I think the song that most exemplifies Porter is “Begin the Beguine,” which is, structurally, more like an art song than a popular song—it’s not AABA, which is the standard song structure.  It’s ABCDE—it keeps evolving and changing and twisting and turning and, importantly, it’s about a person who is of completely two minds—“Don’t let them begin the beguine, make them play!” That’s his whole life—that’s what I mean when I say that his songs are written in code. He really loved his wife Linda and she was an incredibly important part of his life—just because they probably didn’t have sex doesn’t mean that she wasn’t his partner—she was.  Yes, he had to seek sexual satisfaction outside the marriage—and he even fell in love with some of those guys, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t love Linda—he did—very much—and he needed her, too. I know plenty of gay men who have been in long-term relationships who are in the exact same situation. Relationships are complicated things—they evolve and never in ways that fit the fairy tales—that’s what Porter’s songs speak to so, so eloquently.

You and KT have done a lot of shows about the various songwriters in the Great American Songbook, such as “American Rhapsody”. Is there an important composer or team you two haven’t done that you’d like to do?

There are many. We both love Frank Loesser, for example and also Yip Harburgh and I’m a huge fan of Burton Lane’s music. It’s an endless list.

Is there a composer or team you’d absolutely refuse to do an act about—“It ain’t gonna happen”?

The Rolling Stones.

So what’s the story about “Russian on the Side”,  is it a relative of your earlier solo cabaret show “Tchaikowsky (and Other Russians)”?

Thanks!!! It’s based on “Tchaikowsky (and Other Russians).” It’s very different, though, in that Mark Waldrop, my director (of “When Pigs Fly” and Bette Midler’s Millennium tour), has helped me to re-shape the show to be a theater piece, as opposed to a concert. 

From November 2007:

 “Andrea Marcovicci Sings Rodgers & Hart,” opening on Tuesday, November 13 at Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room, celebrates the music of one of the American Songbook’s most prolific and accomplished songwriting teams. Marcovicci will sing both the duos hits (“Manhattan,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Where or When,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “This Can’t Be Love,” “It Never Entered My Mind”) and undiscovered gems. From the giddy excitement of Rodgers & Hart’s early collaborations to Hart’s heartbreaking untimely death, Andrea traces this singularly American story of a duo that gave us so many beloved songs.

Set along the sculpted lines of Richard Rodgers’ sumptuous melodies, a Lorenz Hart lyric is—according to Andrea—“an acting scene waiting to be brought to life. I was attracted to what Josh Logan”—the notoriously gay Broadway director—“called the ‘bitter beauty’ of Hart’s lyrics. No other lyricist brought so much of his own personal life—the elated highs and the manic-depressive lows—to his writing.”

Lorenz Hart, we now know, was a gay man who never quite came to terms with his sexuality. Does your show deal with that?

Absolutely. The show starts in a very light-hearted, congenial way. It’s  also in chronological order and begins in the early 1920s: all sorts of grand silliness and wonderful gaiety—no pun intended. As I tell the story of their work and delve deeper and deeper into Larry Hart’s personality, the story darkens and gets richer. I don’t bring the show back up to some kind of happy ending. I get more and more truthful as the show goes on, about Hart’s self-destructiveness and his very early and very untimely death.

Larry had, in his life, this Milton “Doc” Bender who provided him with men but also with excessive amounts of drugs and alcohol, which ended up being very destructive for him. I look at both sides of him: a gay man, but also a man who was drinking himself to death, destroying his life with destructive habits. You can’t say of Larry Hart “well if he could have come out he would have been happy.” He wasn’t just a closeted gay man; it’s far more complex than that.

How involved was Hart with the gay underworld of Manhattan of his day?

From my research, it seems that Larry Hart didn’t meet with much success in the gay world of his time. He went out with Doc Bender, he enjoyed being around all of the decadence that Bender could bring him. But when it came to his experience one-on-one with men, according to the only actual quote I could find from a man who spent the night with Larry Hart, Larry became frightened and spent most of the night crying. You would think that if Hart had made any kind of happy, successful connections in the gay world—as it’s clear Cole Porter did, for example—by now we’d have more quotes, more available details, more people who would have come out and said “yes, I was his lover.”

Instead, Doc Bender, who was very openly gay, took Larry on “tours” all over the place, took him away to Mexico. There will be things we’ll never know about what happened when they were out of the country. Larry was a severe alcoholic, and what happened on his long binges we’ll never know about. What we do know doesn’t paint a terribly happy picture, it’s clear that he was incapable of establishing an ongoing love relationship and that, very likely, is what destroyed him. If he could have loved and been loved in return, which he wanted so badly, he wouldn’t have died so young.

Did his declining health affect his lyric writing?

Larry Hart is the greatest writer of the unrequited love song. Unbelievably, even as his self-destructiveness plunged him into ever-deeper alcoholism, he was still able to sober up and write “By Jupiter” in 1942 and he wrote some of his finest lyrics at the very end of his life for a revival of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” In the show I really try to understand how the creative Larry stood right at the side of the tortured Larry. At the very end of my show I raise the question of whether he might indeed have loved Richard Rodgers—was that really his great unrequited love? Very possible.

I have to hand it to Richard Rodgers that he put up with unbearable behavior on Larry’s part, he was for 20 years able to cope with it. I talk about that moment when “Oklahoma,” Rodgers’s first collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein, opened while Hart was still alive. There are a lot of people now with so much time gone by, that think Larry Hart dies and then “Oklahoma” is written. That’s not true: He went to the opening night of “Oklahoma” and died six months later.

It’s a very touching show, very funny at times—there isn’t anybody any wittier than Larry Hart. He speaks to me on a level that is just so profound. I don’t think anybody else ever wrote so much from the heart, their own feelings. When you look at the heart of one of his lyrics, they’re every bit as human and moving as anything Hammerstein wrote, just framed in a more sophisticated “New York” way. He’s always been my favorite lyricist: I‘ve wanted to do a show about him ever since I started doing cabaret in the 1980s. I’m so excited!