Time After Time – KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler – Crazy Coqs

Time After Time – KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler performed at the Crazy Coqs, London.

Stopping over in London for a few days after performing on a Queen Mary 2 cabaret cruise from New York to Southampton, the delicious KT Sullivan made a most welcome return visit to the Crazy Coqs, this time with her long-time collaborator, the far-from-shy comedy pianist-singer Mark Nadler.

Sullivan, the artistic director of the Mabel Mercer Cabaret Convention which is four days of pure Manhattan heaven (this year from 20-23 October), is only at the Coqs for three days, more’s the pity. This hugely versatile and glamorous lady graced us for two glorious weeks there last October with two entirely different shows, Rhyme, Women and Song and, alongside Karen Kohler, Vienna to Weimar.

The current set, Time After Time (and naturally the Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn classic rounded off the evening), was a mainly familiar collection of standards, serious and funny, with Sullivan’s run-through of how she knocked off various husbands ‘To Keep My Love Alive’ having us all in fits in a version Rodgers and Hart would have been proud of.

However, a little of Mr Nadler goes a long way, and while his outrageous antics on and under the piano for Irving Berlin’s ‘I Love a Piano’ was a comedic masterpiece, he did tend to hijack the show and after a while his manic grins began to pall.

To be fair, Sullivan gave him full rein to do just that, but he can be his own worst enemy and needed stronger discipline and direction. While his piano artistry is beyond dispute, he is not the greatest singer in the world, and his Cole Porter medley, starting well enough with ‘In the Still of the Night’, went on too long and overpowered such a small room.

They fared much better with Sondheim’s ‘Old Friend’ (from Merrily We Roll Along) and the Gershwins’ ‘Our Love is Here to Stay’, while Sullivan’s solo on ‘Wait Till We’re Sixty-Five’, a witty Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane song from the 1965 show On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, resonated with the audience, especially those, like me, who will not see 65 again.

But the highspot for many came when Sullivan’s octogenerarian singer-songwriter-poet of a mother, the sublime (and still beautiful) Elizabeth, was brought up to hold the room in thrall to one of her more recent compositions, ‘Remember You’. It would take a hard heart not to be moved by such a stunning line as: “You have never left my mind long enough to need remembering”, and for purity of voice and simplicity of performance, it was an object lesson to those who have yet to grasp that great cabaret is often best as a ‘less is more’ exercise.

No wonder KT and her sister Stacy became singers, coming from such a rich musical background, although the former, a trained coloratura soprano, would probably have been in operetta today instead of cabaret had her career path not been changed by listening to the great Barbara Cook. How lucky we are that she did so and what a joy it was to have this Oklahoma belle back in our midst if only for a few days.

Jeremy Chapman

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