Klea Blackhurst is performing at The Crazy Coqs
An Evening With Klea Blackhurst, reviewed at The Crazy Coqs, London.
Nobody ever accused the lady of being soothing or subtle, but you get what it says on the tin with Klea Blackhurst, a disciple of the Ethel Merman school of belters for whom, in a room holding just 66 at a warmly glowing and enthusiastic Crazy Coqs, a microphone was hardly necessary.
As much an actress and comedienne as singer, Blackhurst, New York-based but orginally from a Mormon upbringing in Salt Lake City – “they called me Ethel Mormon because I was always trying to sing like her”, she told me afterwards – is barely known in the UK but musicals fans with a memory will recall her playing Ado Annie in a 2002 concert version of Oklahoma! at the Royal Albert Hall celebrating Richard Rodgers’ centenary.
The following spring she brought over her award-winning Merman tribute show Everything the Traffic Will Allow for a spin at Greenwich and five years ago she was involved in Jerry Herman’s Broadway, a charity show at the London Palladium.
Charging through her 70-minute set of Herman, Merman, Dorothy Fields, Vernon Duke, Peggy Lee and Rodgers and Hammerstein, Blackhurst finally finished off with Irving Berlin’s anthem from Annie Get Your Gun, ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’.
And she had us laughing as she twisted her larynx around the ridiculous ‘Yodelling Muchacha’ and gave us a blast from a well-hidden trumpet, accompanied by the talented Leigh Thompson on piano.
Yet it was the newest and least-known song that earned the greatest applause, the poignant ‘While I Still Have the Time’, a power ballad which Marvin Hamlisch wrote with Rupert Holmes for the Jerry Lewis-directed musical version of Lewis’ old 1963 movie The Nutty Professor. Sadly, Hamlisch died last August shortly after the show premiered in Tennessee, although maybe he knew from its theme – that we have to make the most of every minute – that his days were numbered.
This was an absolute knockout as was the Cy Coleman/Dorothy Fields ‘It’s Not Where You Start, It’s Where You Finish’ and the later part of the show caught fire after a stop-go beginning in which, like the great pro she is, the artist even got a laugh out of an early fluff.
While not having the most versatile voice, she knows what she’s good at and sticks to the plan, interspersing the Great American Songbook with wonderful anecdotes, many of them amusing, Recalling a charity gig at which she was introduced to Sophie, Countess of Wessex, she said that where she comes from HRH means Human Resources Helper. And her doughnut story involving Jerry Lewis was priceless.
She told of Merman playing ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ for 1,147 performances “and never missing one – not like today’s stars who’ll take the day off to try out a new pair of shoes!” Praising the audience at The Crazy Coqs, she said how amazing it was to find London cabaret fans generally “so youthful and actually smiling – in New York it would be unthinkable to find people who meant to be watching you”.
Despite her long career, Blackhurst has yet to star in a Broadway show which had always been her dream since she was a little girl in Utah – “even though I didn’t even know where Broadway was” – but this summer she plays the lead in Hello, Dolly! at the famous Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut – “not quite Broadway but getting there!”
She will be most welcome back at the Coqs any time.
Jeremy Chapman
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