The Callaway Sisters: Side By Side – streamed Zoom concert from Tucson, Arizona (available until 31 May 2021).
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
My daughter Sarah once said: “Ann Hampton Callaway has a voice from another universe.” Those so-true words came to mind when watching Ann and her kid sister Liz having a blast in Arizona where the senior Callaway now lives.
Covid had kept them apart for 14 months until Liz flew over from New York to work on this reunion Side By Side concert. Seeing them together at the piano making sublime music in AHC’s sunny living room in Tucson brought a warm glow to a chilly English evening.
As sisters they couldn’t look more different, Liz petite and blonde, Ann 5ft 10 “and worth the climb”, a darker soul in every respect. And they sound very different, Liz an angelic soprano with a tinkling, bell-like clarity, Ann a jazzier, powerhouse presence with a voice of many colours and infinite range.
They sing very differently too, Liz with a Broadway voice and a Sondheim-influenced career, Ann more at home in a piano bar or smoky cabaret room. Amazingly when they perform together, their intricate harmonies chime perfectly.
My introduction to AHC came in the 90s at the much-missed Pizza on the Park in Knightsbridge. It was love at first, mind-blowing sight. She was the full package – singer extraordinaire, songwriter, pianist, entertainer and an impressionist who could uncannily mimic not only Sarah Vaughan and Streisand but musical instruments too.
And then came her party piece, asking her audience to throw unconnected words at her and she would work every one into an instant song that (sort of) made sense. It was a cabaret act like no other, delivered with a waspish, self-deprecating wit.
The appreciation of Liz came later when they brought their Sibling Revelry show to London for the Divas at the Donmar series in 1998, brilliantly taking the mick out of each other amid some truly thrilling interpretations of the Great American Songbook.
They repeated Sibling Revelry at the London Hippodrome 17 years later but this cosy Side By Side concert is a much more simple affair, just two sisters singing their hearts out and palpably gleeful for the opportunity to do so together.
Delivered live by Zoom, it is a warts-and-all show with no attempt to airbrush out the occasional awkward moment and technical blip. And all the more natural for that.
From Sibling Revelry comes a personal favourite, ‘Old Friend’ (not to be confused with Sondheim’s ‘Old Friends’) which Ann sings magnificently early in the set.
It is the only number that has endured from a 1978 Off-Broadway show with the world’s most cumbersome title, I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It On The Road, by Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford.
With it, Ann mixes in ‘My Buddy’, a 1922 pop song that has been recorded by pretty well everybody. I last heard ‘Al Capone’ singing it to his deaf son a few years back in an episode of that gangster epic Boardwalk Empire.
Ann reveals the sisters “were not really all that close growing up” but after their college days they realised they had a lot in common.
A preview of their next sister act called Broadway: The Callaways which is booked for Feinstein’s 54 Below early next year is a tremendous treatment of Stephen Schwartz’s ‘Corner of the Sky’, the best number in Pippin. By then, Ann has stopped playing the piano and for a while the accompanist from long range is their musical director Alex Rybeck.
Liz made her Broadway debut as a waitress in Sondheim’s short-lived but now much-loved Merrily We Roll Along. The job didn’t last long as the show folded after 16 performances. The sisters take ‘Our Time’ out of it, saying “it’s like Sondheim had written it just for us” and to hear their blissful treatment is to see what they mean.
There is more Sondheim from Liz with the title songs from Company and Marry Me a Little. She has a strong career link with him.
After the Merrily disaster, she played Young Sally in the famous 1985 Lincoln Center Follies concert, Dot in Sunday in the Park With George and was one of the galaxy of stars in Sondheim On Sondheim at the Royal Albert Hall.
She was GI’s wife Ellen in the original Broadway cast of Miss Saigon in 1991 and gives us a beautiful reminder of that with ‘I Still Believe’.
There is so much to enjoy. ‘I Know Him So Well’ from Chess, ‘Nowadays’ from Chicago, a bluesy ‘Stormy Weather’, songs by Van Morrison, Melissa Manchester, Carly Simon and for the encore Carole King’s ‘You’ve Got A Friend’. Highlight after highlight.
Only two of Ann’s own compositions ‘Here Come the Callaways’ and the theme song from the hugely popular 90s American TV series The Nanny which ran for 146 episodes, Ann collecting royalties from all of them – “my accountant still calls it my finest work” she quips.
Sadly none of the ballads she wrote early in her career find a place in the packed programme. We expect to hear some of those gorgeous “Ann-dards” next time.
They are great on medleys. There is the Back-Seat-Of-The-Car pop medley of golden oldies like ‘Sugar, Sugar’ ‘Candy Girl’, ‘O Lord Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz’ and ‘Dance to the Music’ (complete with air guitars!).
Topping that, the Huge Medley, a 17-song trawl through Broadway greats, starting with Irving Berlin’s ‘Sisters’ (obviously) and bringing legends Herman, Arlen, Styne, Loesser, Bernstein, Kander and Ebb, Coleman and yet more Sondheim into that bumper bundle. Exhausting but great fun.
As ever, ladies, an absolute pleasure, we are in awe – and Ann is due back solo in London in September.
Jeremy Chapman
- The Callaway Sisters: Side By Side is available on demand until 31 May 2021. More details HERE.
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