Tag: music

Review: Clint Holmes

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A singer of great skill and soul, Clint Holmes just keeps getting better. His current show is devoted to the music of Peter Allen. Now, I have mixed feelings about the Allen songbook. I always found his tribute to his father “Tenterfield Saddler” a bit on the maudlin side. That is, until I heard Holmes sing it. There is a sincerity and textured emotion that Clint does better that almost any other singer, and that therefore makes him the perfect ambassador for Mr. Allen.

Holmes is on the record as saying “I feel like I’ve lived enough life to finally dig into Peter’s body of work.” And Holmes has had some hardships, so what was deep just got deeper. I kept thinking, throughout this show, “Wow! The staging!” The director was Will Nunziata. He has a painterly visual sense, which serves Clint very well.

Holmes’s voice is smooth and warm, like a fine aged bourbon, he charms. The name of the show is “When You Get Caught Between The Moon and New York City.” Holmes relates that Allen was on a plane that circled an NYC airport, thus the lyric. Holmes also get personal: his father was a jazz vocalist, who worked in a steel mill, and his mother was a white British opera singer, who taught voice.

He includes a song he wrote himself “1944”, about his parents meeting in Europe, and he has imbued the song with both richly evocative details and deep feeling, and he delivers it warmly but with very tasteful restraint. It never fails to make me cry. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

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

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

On By dramaqueennycIn cabaret, reviewLeave a comment

“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: Champion

On By dramaqueennycIn Opera, reviewLeave a comment

THE BEST DAMN OPERA I’VE EVER SEEN!!! I’ve been a fan of jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard since I heard his score for the 2012 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. I really liked his Met Opera premiere last season’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. But Champion (which was actually his first opera, written about 10 years ago) is world-beating.

Champion focuses on the truly operatic real life story of boxer Emile Griffith. A closeted bisexual, his initial ambition was to be a haberdasher, but when he approaches a professional hat-maker, the man sees this muscular youth and decides that he would be a better fit in the older man’s real passion: managing boxers. The young man from the U. S. Virgin Islands takes to it so well that he is soon world champion. At one point he fights the homophobic Benny Paret – who taunts him with “maricón, maricón” in the weigh-in – and delivers a powerful KO that puts Paret in a coma, from which he never awakens.

Blanchard and librettist Michael Christofer have brilliantly crafted a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic portrait of a life. The opera is moving from its very beginning, where an old Emile, suffering from dementia, sings “This is my shoe. Where does my shoe go?” to a melancholy orchestration. Devastating. But minutes later we are at a “junkanoo” celebration in his native island of St. Thomas where we see a young Emile determined to make hats, as several dancers – and stilt walkers! – dressed in colorful costumes executing Camille A. Brown’s spectacular choreography. The percussion arrangements throughout are some the most propulsive in opera.

Champion is also incredibly sexy!! There’s a locker room sequence where several brawny fellas spend most of the time in nothing but jock straps. A later sequence at a gay bar called Hagen’s Hole features the corps de ballet in the skimpiest of tops. The same sequence features any number of drag queens in fabulous wardrobe.

The cast is uniformly great with Eric Owens (one of my favorite baritones) as older Emile, rising star Ryan Speedo Green doing the heavy lifting as young Emile, making it seem effortless but still very poignantly acted. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe knocks it out of the park as Hagen, the owner of the abovementioned “Hole.” She gets to sing the bawdiest phrase I’ve ever heard in an opera house “Well fuck me sideways!” See for yourself:

Absolutely thrilling, and I’m not just saying that because it is so freaking gay! It’s to my mind Blanchard’s finest work to date, and he is one of the best living American composers we have. My very highest recommendation.

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: 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.

News: The Meeting* returns!!!

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Huzzah! The Meeting of the International Order of Sodomites is back! The great writer, curator, femme and major homosexual Justin Elizabeth Sayre is returning it to Joe’s Pub. I’m not sure what this Sunday’s Meeting is about exactly, but it’s called an “Emergency” Meeting, and Goddess knows there are plenty of emergencies. And The Meeting* is fully back as a monthly phenomenon.

A recent quote from Sayre to pique your curiosity: “Glamour is about diligence, thought and restraint. We live in a time of enormous casualness. The time of the permanently busy, spinning on a wheel of being seen. To be glamorous is to change time and not merely to be seen but known. To make as a craftsmen makes, to curate, to perfect, to live in a world that reflects one’s self instead of being reflected upon.

“By believing and dedicating ourselves to glamour and her behavioral sister Elegance, we say to this greedy, ugly world quivering before us with its fearful blankness in hideously comfortable shoes, ‘No, I will honor my soul and the souls of those around me with beauty, kindness and rigor. I will not sink into the ease of a life prescribed and sold and advertised to me, but ultimately gifting me nothing. I will decide my own fate. I will be free.’”

Fasten your seatbelts…..

For tickets, click here.

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