Cabaret is back, alive and well in New York, as is Off-Broadway, writes Patrick Honoré.
Karen Mason: Kander & Ebb and All That Jazz – Birdland ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Directed by Barry Kleinbort and expertly accompanied on the piano by her longtime musical director Christopher Denny, with Ritt Henn on bass, Broadway veteran Karen Mason (Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!, Hairspray and Wonderland) took us on a journey through the extensive and versatile repertoire of Kander and Ebb, in her distinctive intimate style.
She also took a more laidback approach to such Liza Minnelli specialities as ‘I’m One of the Smart Ones’ and ‘Sorry I Asked’, both currently incorporated into the new Broadway stage musical New York, New York. Minnelli was also referenced with ‘Maybe This Time’, ‘Colored Lights’, ‘Ring Them Bells’, ‘Married’, ‘But the World Goes ’Round’, and of course the title songs from Cabaret and New York, New York, mashed up with ‘All I Need is One Good Break’ from Minnelli’s first Kander and Ebb Broadway show Flora the Red Menace (1965), a piece also represented though the haunting ‘A Quiet Thing’, all of them delivered with Mason’s own personal flair.
Setting the tone of the evening with jazzier, less show tune arrangements of ‘All That Jazz’ and ‘Willkommen’, Mason recounted her first encounter with the famous songwriting team while auditioning for their first songbook revue The World Goes ’Round (1991), re-creating some of the songs she got to eventually perform in that show, including one of their very first ballads ‘My Coloring Book’. This track introduced her to their greatness, as well as the life-defining ‘How Lucky Can You Get’, which they wrote for Barbra Streisand’s movie Funny Lady (1975), used here as an encore.
A special treat was the inclusion of the beautiful ‘Go Back Home’, from the more recent Scottsboro Boys, but the highlight of the evening was having Mason sing the best song from the underrated The Visit, ‘Love and Love Alone’, in front of the great Chita Rivera, whose Broadway swan song it was in 2015 and who gave her a deserved standing ovation followed by the rest of the packed room.
A visit from Karen Mason to the Crazy Coqs or The Pheasantry with this show would be most welcome.
Sondheim Unplugged – 54 Below ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
In sync with the opening night of the first Broadway revival of Sondheim’s masterpiece Sweeney Todd at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was a very special edition of the monthly Sondheim Unplugged, produced by Lucia Spina, directed by John Fischer and hosted by Rob Maitner.
Featuring Dick Tracy, Into the Woods, Passion, West Side Story, and of course Sweeney Todd, incidentally all my favourites of the master’s work, the selection was a pure delight and non-stop cavalcade of talent from beginning to end, using the gender reverse à la Broadway Backwards for most of the songs.
Jordan Wolfe kicked the evening off with a bang with the too rarely heard ‘Back in Business’, which Sondheim wrote for the movie Dick Tracy and which Madonna eventually discarded in favour of Patrick Leonard’s simpler song with the same title for her album I’m Breathless.
After ‘Sooner or Later’ and ‘What Can You Lose?’, two gems from the movie score commissioned by Sondheim’s friend Warren Beatty, came the gender-reversed ‘Giants in the Sky’ featuring Ramona Mallory and ‘No One is Alone’ featuring Derrick Cobey, leading onto ‘Agony’ performed by Maitner and Phumzile Sojola.
After those Into the Woods numbers came an equally excellent selection from Passion, ‘Happiness’ featuring Eric Michael Gillett, ‘Loving You’ from Spina, and ‘I Read’ sung by Mallory, clearly reflecting how much Sondheim was in love when he wrote that neglected masterpiece.
A selection from Sweeney Todd followed, leading on to West Side Story to wrap up the evening, starting with a humorous rendition of ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ by Maitner, followed by an emotional ‘Maria’ from Sojola and an appropriate ‘Somewhere’ sung by Lauren Blackman.
This is perhaps the best Unplugged I’ve ever attended, with the Crazy Coqs outing of February 2020 coming close. Long live Sondheim Unplugged!
Caroline Huerta and the cast of Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical (Picture: Evan Zimmerman/MurphyMade)
Stranger Sings! – Playhouse 46 at St. Luke’s ★ ★ ★ ★
At St. Lukes, the Off-Broadway venue closest to Broadway itself and the longtime home of Forbidden Broadway, comes Stranger Sings!, a wonderful musical parody of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, with Jonathan Hogue (book, music, and lyrics) giving us of loads of satire in its many (perhaps too many) clever, funny songs, which nonetheless help push the plot along.
Moving actors through this kind of theatre in the round, director Nick Flatto’s work is appropriately quirky, while Ashley Marinelli’s choreography helps bring the book to life, as every step is meaningfully funny.
Two actors making impressive Off-Broadway debuts are Kyle Mangold and Dashiell Gregory, who play several characters, giving each a unique personality. The piece overall includes top-notch actors, and the creative team does a fantastic job, even quoting Avenue Q with the use of puppets and including a showstopping send up of ‘Rose’s Turn’ from Gypsy. In that way, it stands as a worthy modern successor to Forbidden Broadway.
Given the Netflix series’ wild popularity, many audience members will find it easy to grasp and feel more in on the jokes, but the show is still highly enjoyable if you’re not too familiar with Stranger Things (like myself), and since Stranger Sings! is playing on Sunday evenings when all Broadway theatres are dark, it is a perfect outing to wrap up the week, extended by popular demand until 13 August.
Picture: Joan Marcus
Dear World – Encores! at New York City Center ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Three years after putting together the best version of Jerry Herman’s Mack & Mabel, director-choreographer Josh Rhodes managed to resurrect an even more neglected masterpiece (and legendary flop) by Jerry Herman, composer of the hits Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles.
Based on the play The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux, Dear World opened on Broadway on 6 February 1969 and closed after only 132 performances and 45 previews, proving unworthy of the audience’s expectations for another glamorous Angela Lansbury vehicle after her triumph in Mame three years earlier. The simple tale of a madwoman was drowned in too big of a production, and a subsequent chamber piece version, notably the London premiere at the Charring Cross Theatre in 2013, starring Betty Buckley and directed and choreographed by the late Gillian Lynne, already worked better.
In our troubled world of deceitfulness and lies, Dear World finally makes sense, as the lyrics of the title song could have been written about Covid: “So make your recovery quick, world; We’re sick of having a sick world; Take the stitches out, dear world; Rip the bandages off, dear world; And get well soon!”
Arguably one of Herman’s best, second only to Mack & Mabel, the score is full of gems aside from its best known French sounding ballad ‘I Don’t Want to Know’, and this Encores! production happily included three more delightful cut songs. The opening, ‘Through the Bottom of the Glass’, introduced the great Donna Murphy (two-time Tony winner for Passion and The King and I, and previously at Encores! Stephen Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle in 2010), perfectly cast in the role of Contessa, expectedly delivering a phenomenal performance despite her missing some rehearsals due to illness. This was followed by ‘Just a Little Bit More’, performed by the ever-hilarious Brooks Ashmanskas (recently seen in Bullets over Broadway and The Prom), and “Have a Little Pity on the Rich”, delivered by the always excellent Christopher Fitzgerald (Waitress, Young Frankenstein, Wicked) in the role of The Sewerman.
As has been the case for the last decade of Encores!, the production values were far above a simple concert, and we had something closer to a fully staged production with an integrated orchestra fitting into the effective scenic design by Paul Tate dePoo III. Helped by the excellent costume design by Toni-Leslie James and lighting by Amith Chandrashaker, Rhodes did as fine a job her as he did with Mack & Mabel three seasons ago, taking advantage of a large cast and dancing ensemble, with imaginatively staged and choreographed production numbers such as ‘Garbage’ and the title song.
The change in the order of the songs also worked, with ‘One Person’ as an ideal Act I closer, reminiscent of ‘Before the Parade Passes By’ in Hello, Dolly!, with the best song of the score, ‘Kiss Her Now’, saved for the climax of Act II, just before ‘Finale Ultimo’.
This near perfect Dear World may still not be a popular enough to qualify for a Broadway transfer but is sure to reassert its place in the pantheon of the great Jerry Herman’s tuneful musicals.
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