CABARET LIFE NYC: Darling and Ditzy Dana Lorge is Finally Back Hosting a New Variety Show at the Met Room

Cabaret Features and Commentary by Stephen Hanks

It is a late February afternoon and Dana Lorge is sitting at a front table, stage left, at the Laurie Beechman Theatre fumbling through index cards with the names and brief bios of the performers slated to sing in the latest installment of Joseph Macchia's "Cabaret Cares" Benefit Variety Show. Lorge has hosting duties and is trying to get her lineup ducks in a row, as well as deciding what fabulous and borderline outrageous outfit she will wear once the show starts. In typical Dana style, she is wearing gold stretch pants, gold boots with a two-toned tuxedo stripe on the side of the shoes, and a gold zippered jacket with sequins. And, of course, there's the usual array of ostentatious, but tasteful, jewelry. She looks perfectly fine--and hot--to me.

"What do you mean you have to change clothes?" I ask incredulously when Dana rises from her chair. "Aren't you going to wear that?"

"This is my before-the-show outfit," she says, as if she's surprised I didn't know. "I'm just going to change it up slightly."

A few minutes later and with just minutes to spare before the start of the show, she returns with just one visible costume change. The zippered jacket has been replaced by an even sexier off the shoulder, gold sweater (also with sequins, 'natch). I almost expected Shirley Bassey to emerge onstage singing "Goldfinger." (But, of course, she couldn't because Ms. Bassey was in Hollywood preparing to sing the song at that night's Academy Awards' James Bond film tribute.) Which raises the interesting question: Could Dana Lorge have been a Bond girl? Perhaps if 007 was played by Jackie Mason.

Can I tell you how much I've missed Dana Lorge? Let's put it this way, since hosting her last weekly Wednesday night singing and comedy shindig at the Iguana Restaurant nine months ago--after being a warm, wild, and welcoming staple there for three years--I've been going through Dana Banana withdrawal. Oh sure, she did a one-off evening at the Iridium last October, and hosted one of Joseph Macchia's "Cabaret Cares" Benefit shows in late February, but that's hardly enough for someone who needs a regular aural fix of Dana-isms and a visual injection of glitzy Dana-wear, including all the wonderful and wacky accoutrement that go with being in the Dana-World orbit.

My affection for Dame Dana is easy to explain. On my birthday night two and a half years ago, my wife asked if there was anything different I wanted to do to celebrate and I her told about a cabaret open-mic/variety show that I had heard about through a couple of musical theater friends. I had no idea who was responsible for the festivities, but once I experienced Dana's retro Borscht Belt comedy act and quintessential New York charm--not to mention the clearly over-the-top yet totally in character outfits--I was immediately in love (and the wife understood). I wanted to return the next week and with Dana-like chutzpah, I asked her if I could sing and she agreed without a moment of hesitation. That was also when I discovered Cabaret Scenes Magazine, volunteered to start writing cabaret reviews and, well, the rest is history.

But when Dana became history at the Iguana last July--and after winning two 2012 MAC Awards for "Best Variety Show" and "Best Variety Show Host" to boot--who knew she'd be reduced to being a cabaret audience member searching for a new showcase? But a Metropolitan Room Mensch has come to the rescue in the form of Bernie Furshpan (the Met Room's General Partner and Manager), who has provided Dana (and her Musical Director sidekick Barry Levitt) with a monthly forum for her unique brand of cabaret shtick beginning Friday, April 5 at 7-8:15 pm. While the new show won't be the two-hour-plus extravaganza of yore featuring more than a dozen performers, Dana's new "Variety Show" promises to present a solid group of experienced and well-known cabaret and musical theater pros. For the April 5 opener, the Lorge Lineup features Richard Skipper, her former Award-winning Co-host from the Iguana days (in photo with Dana and the legendary Julie Wilson, above); film and stage actor Jim Brochu (of Zero Mostel One-Man Show fame), singers LaTanya Hall (from the CBS show "Blue Bloods) and Peggy Herman Klat, Rick Crom (Creator of Newsical the Musical), and Mr. Furshpan, who will show off his stand-up comedy chops. But the real star of the show will always be the hilarious, unpredictable, darling Dana, who will both crack you up with her infectious humor and surprise you with her engaging singing performances. (Please click on Page 2 below to continue.)

Last May, I wrote a profile of Dana (that's us in the photo, left) that appeared on the website of Times Square Chronicles and below offer a slightly updated version of it again for those who might want a deeper insight into one of New York cabaret's most colorful characters.

"I don't know if you'll want to talk in here, it's a little smoky," Dana Lorge says, as she rolls down the driver's side window of her grey Chrysler PT Cruiser. It is 5:30 on a Monday evening and Lorge is camped on 44th Street between 8th and 9th avenues waiting for 6pm when it's once again legal to park with impunity. I stick my head through the window, take a whiff and deem it habitable so we can make use of the time-killing and start an interview. Since it's less than a week from Lorge's birthday, I feel compelled to begin with a provocative and decidedly ungentlemanly question.

"I'm 27," Dana deadpans, "And I'm gonna be 27 next year." I decide to ask in another way. "So, how long have you been in the business?" "More than 40 years, but I'm still 27." Lorge breaks out in a cigarette-tinged belly laugh at her own joke that only a comedienne with her charm can get away with. Once the DMV coast is clear, we mosey over to a local watering hole where she begins to tell me about the hard preparation and promotional work involved with being the very glitzy, somewhat ditzy hostess of the weekly cabaret variety series "Wednesday Night at the Iguana" (at the Iguana NYC restaurant at West 54th Street), for which she has been nominated for a MAC award for the second straight year. I don't want her to be late for a 7pm show across the street at Birdland, so since there's no clock on the wall of the bar and I'm using my cell phone as a tape recorder, I wonder about the time.

"Hold on," she says. She reaches down and plops onto the table a handbag that looks like something the Wizard of Oz would give a cross-dressing Tin Man--a beaded, leopard-skinned sack with a large clock on one side. "I also have this bag in black, red, bronze and zebra and they go with different outfits," Lorge reveals. "I need them all as accessories because in three years hosting the Iguana I've never worn the same outfit twice."

"Do you have a sugar daddy?" I ask. "Yeah," she says, without missing a beat, "a sugar daddy with diabetes."

It's that kind of humor, coupled with her boundless energy, warm personality, and generous spirit that has developed for Dana (as in "banana," she will point out, not Day-na, as in Andrews, Carvey or Delaney) such a consistent and loyal following for the Iguana shows. Lorge has been hosting solo for the past year and a half, after about a year and a half being Dana Second Banana to co-host Richard Skipper (who had taken over the Series from Joan Crowe in 2009). In 2010, Skipper and Lorge (in photo, right) won MAC awards for Variety Show/Recurring Series and for Hosts of Variety Show Series or Open Mic. Since Skipper left to focus more on his performing career and other projects, Lorge hasn't missed a beat. As a host, she takes advantage of the experience gained working clubs in the Catskills early in her career, and combines Borscht Belt shtick with a Vegas Strip sensibility. As a comedienne, she's a raven-haired, less abrasive, sans surgery version of Joan Rivers, only much sexier and with the most gorgeous pair of violet eyes in the business. But Dana is still your basic meshugenah.

"I'm a half-German, half-Polish Jew," says the former garment center model, born on Manhattan's Upper West Side and raised in Long Island. "So I'm stubborn and stupid at the same time." Rim shot! "My mother was one of the funniest people and my father's humor was droll like Jack Benny's."

That genetic sense of humor has helped Lorge corral acting gigs throughout her career. In the '80s, she had a role in the Broadway musical Grind (with Ben Vereen, Leilani Jones and Stubby Kaye), in the '90s she played the title role in the Off-Broadway show Aunt Chooch's Birthday, and in 2005 she was one of the little old ladies Max Bialystock charms money out of in the film version of The Producers. ("Oy, learning to dance with a walker wasn't easy," Dana jokes.) Since she always wants to be ready in case another paid gig comes along, Lorge continues working on her craft, taking acting/improv-singing classes with songwriter and conductor David Friedman.

As a singer with a raspy but endearing and evocative alto, Lorge's repertoire features parodies and songs about relationships, marriage, divorce, dieting, face lifts and, of course, shopping (some written by her close friend and Iguana regular Bobbie Horowitz). In 2011, she co-starred (with Helena Grenot) in Patricia Fitzpatrick's MAC-nominated cabaret show Cougars on the Prowl, and pulled "The Ballad of Irving (the 142nd Fastest Gun in the West)" out of her songbook holster (photo, left) and brought down the house at Don't Tell Mama. "Dana is vastly underrated as a singer," says Musical Director Barry Levitt (with Dana in photo, below), who has worked with Lorge for more than 30 years, and has been the regular pianist at the Iguana the past three years. "Her ballads are killers and are beautifully acted and realized performances." Indeed, one listen to Lorge's heartfelt and heart-wrenching rendition of Francesca Blumenthal's "The Lies of Handsome Men," will take you beyond ferklempt.

On February 22, 2012, the Iguana cabaret party in the Mexican restaurant's large upstairs room was more festive than usual. While Lorge tries to celebrate the birthdays of all the Iguana regs, tonight will be all about her birthday that is just four days away. For Dana, though, there's plenty of work to be done before the frivolity can begin. She arrives about 5pm for the 8pm start so she can multi-task before the regular crowd shuffles in, including setting up the room, checking the sound equipment, greeting singers (who've been booked at least two weeks in advance as opposed to the same night in open mic formats), who arrive as early as 6pm to rehearse their songs with Levitt and bass player Saadi Zain, and do her genial hostess thing. Tonight she is decked out in a pink, beaded, and somewhat see-through caftan over pink slacks that flatters her figure, which is still sensually shapely after all these years. "Ah, it's just a pink schmatta," she says, in her usual self-deprecating style.

But the joking can't hide the discomfort Lorge is still feeling, and the subtle limp she's still walking around with since being injured in a car accident in late summer/early fall of 2011. As she was approaching her Queens neighborhood after an Iguana night, another car slammed into the driver's side, damaging her left hip. Fortified with a hefty dose of medications, she continued hosting for weeks with her best "show must go on" attitude until the pain forced her into surgery for a disc repair. Amazingly, she only missed two weeks of hosting after the surgery.

"No matter how she's feeling or what the weather is like or how many people show up, she's always on and makes Iguana feel like it's the most important place to be on Wednesday nights," says Jillian Laurain, a veteran cabaret singer, Dana's close friend, and another Iguana regular. "As a hostess, she's charismatic and a total professional. Dana reminds me of those entertainers of the past who were bigger-than-life because of their big personalities."

About an hour before show time, Laurain strolls around the room and drops packets of party favors on all the tables. Then she and cabaret performer Daryl Glenn (who has been serving as Lorge's greeter/box office guy for just over two years) get busy taping a giant birthday card and a Happy Birthday sign to the backdrop of the Iguana stage. The evening's singers and guests arrive, many bearing gifts, including regular Joey Infante who, when he isn't singing at Iguana, is an artist and hair stylist. Infante, who has known Lorge for 25 years, presents her with a hand-designed, personalized birthday card featuring Dana on a red carpet with photographers on either side snapping her picture and flashing lights that read "Superstar." Later, toward the end of the show, he'll present Lorge with a flaming homemade birthday cake decorated with the message "Dana-Queen of Glitz." Like many other Iguana denizens, Infante is indebted to Lorge for providing a safe haven for him to work out songs he eventually performed in 2011 in his debut cabaret show, Babalu, which earned him a MAC nomination.

"Singing at Iguana helped me get my confidence back after so many years of not performing," Infante admits. "I had three shows that sold out and I owe that to Dana, and all the friends I've made here. To me, Iguana is like being with family once a week." Laurain, who directed Infante's show, concurs: "Dana gives us a venue to hone our craft. We get to try out songs we might use in a show, find out how an audience will react to it, and get rid of our nerves."

Corinna Sowers-Adler made the trip from New Jersey and is one of the many cabaret performers who are on hand to honor Dana's birthday even though they aren't scheduled to sing. "When I came to Iguana a couple of years ago, it was the first open mic or variety show I'd done and Dana was so gracious and supportive," Corinna says. "I always tell Dana that I want to be her when I grow up."

In Lorge's opening number, she makes it clear that she will never grow up. She begins with a few bars of the John Wallowich classic "I'm 27" ('natch), announces that "In order to stay young, I hang out with very old people," and then segues into "Wrinkles," the Bobbie Horowitz "Cheek to Cheek" parody. "Sagging, I hate bagging/So, I think I'll settle for my own technique/Lot's of makeup and a turtle neck that chic/And control top hose that hold them cheek to cheek."

But the celebratory star turn of the night belongs to bodacious blues/rock singer Lauren Robert, who shakes up the décor on the Iguana walls with an original birthday song she wrote especially for Lorge. With a vocal that would make Joplin jealous, Robert testified for Dana, Blues style.

She brings us all here to the Lizard,
She makes us laugh, cry and spit,
She tries to make us welcome,
Even with all our prima donna shit,
Nobody else can do it.
Like this lady who's made it last,
And when the night is over.
We just know we've had a blast.

By song's end the whole room is clapping rhythmically and serenading the hostess with bluesy happy birthday riffs.

While Dana is clearly kvelling from the tribute, she gets her biggest buzz from watching performers like Robert get a forum to display their talent. [Editor's Note: Robert has since gone on to release a highly-praised CD and have a major dance club hit with one of the CD's tracks, "Look Out Love."] "I love seeing new performers," Lorge admits, "Young ones, old ones, seasoned ones. And there's a great satisfaction in discovering new voices."

Gary Crawford is one of those "new" talent discoveries. In his late 60s, Crawford had been coming to the Iguana to watch and not be heard for more than two years before Lorge playfully confronted him. "I'm sick of you coming here and never singing," she told Crawford, who from the friendly confines of his apartment would record his own CDs using a karaoke machine. "I want to see you get up and sing!" When Crawford finally summoned the courage to take the stage at Iguana in fall 2011, his smooth crooning gave some shocked audience members lockjaw. "Once Gary decided to sing," Dana says, glowingly, "he was great and it was thrilling."

"When I first came to the Iguana I was going through a personal trauma and the place became a sanctuary, says Crawford, who is now working on his first solo cabaret show. "I was listening to people who were singing for the joy of it and it was an immensely calming and spiritual experience. Without Dana's love and support, I may have never taken those first steps to sing on a stage. What else can I say about Dana other than she is a force of nature who is a complete joy to be around."

I second that emotion. -END-