Triple Threats: Broadway, Jazz, & Soul was performed at the Crazy Coqs, London.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
After 16 months online, during which Harold Sanditen managed to host over 500 vocalists from around the world, the Open Mic Party is alive and well, back in person at the Crazy Coqs where it belongs. Triple Threats was a special Open Mic Highlights programme, featuring three young performers, each one having made their mark on their different styles despite being at the very beginning of their careers.
Starting the evening was 18-year-old Broadway baby Ava Nicole Frances with ‘First You Dream’, a lesser-known Kander and Ebb ballad from one of their greatest underrated scores Steel Pier, followed by another great song from another legendary flop, ‘Woman’ by Schönberg and Boublil, from The Pirate Queen.
Frances’ own experiences with, and love of, Broadway was obvious in her medley of ‘N.Y.C.’ from Annie and ‘All I Need is One Good Break’, another Kander and Ebb composition, this time from Flora the Red Menace.
Going into more contemporary territory, she went on with ‘One Perfect Moment’ from the musical Bring It On and ‘Good Morning Baltimore’ from Hairspray, a song which fitted her like a glove. There was also a clever medley of ‘Over the Rainbow’ and ‘Home’ (The Wiz).
This was the London debut of the vivacious Frances, who has already won a Broadway World Cabaret Award for Best Junior Performer as well as being a top five finalist on Broadway World’s Next on Stage. Counting Kristin Chenoweth’s Broadway Boot Camp among her training, this budding Broadway diva already has two singles as notches on her belt as well!
The second singer of the evening, 18-year-old Anaïs Reno, accompanied by pianist Pete Malinverni, was definitely more on the jazz side. Reno, performing since the age of eight, is the winner of the 2016 Forte International Competition’s Platinum Award, the Mabel Mercer Foundation competition and the Julie Wilson Award. Her first album, based on the works of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Lovesome Thing, gained rave reviews and even climbed to number six on the jazz chart.
Her final selection started and ended with two most original renditions of Ellington classics, ‘I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But the Blues’ and “Caravan,” revisiting along the way the French standard ‘Les Feuilles Mortes’ by Joseph Kosma and Jacques Prévert, with a charming and impeccable accent, as well as ‘Round Midnight’ (Thelonious Monk) and Cole Porter’s ‘I Love You’.
Bringing a sprinkle of soul to the evening and also making her debut at the Crazy Coqs was Eliza Leng, fresh from the Wales Millennium Centre opening for Wicked. She added her own personal phrasing to ‘Feeling Good’, a Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley song which has crossed different musical styles from Nina Simone and Muse to Michael Bublé, before going on to ‘Pearl’s a Singer’ from the Lieber and Stoller jukebox musical Smokey Joe’s Café.
Leng then brought on her guest pianist and composer, Alexander Strong, for an original ‘The Girl With a Vision’, and finished her act with two classics, ‘Something’s Got a Hold On Me’ and ‘That’s Life’. Leng was then by joined by Ava Nicole Frances, Anaïs Reno and MC Harold Sanditen for a spirited ‘I Hear Music’, a wonderful song by Burton Lane and Frank Loesser from an obscure Paramount musical film called Dancing on a Dime.
Long live the Crazy Coqs, truly the heart and soul of the cabaret scene in London, and its longest-running show, Harold Sanditen’s Open Mic Party, getting ready for an Elvis Presley tribute on 9 June.
Patrick Honoré
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