Andrea Axelrod Brings MORE THAN A BRIDE to Don't Tell Mama

MAC-nominee Andrea Axelrod will pay tribute to the musical legacy of the great character actress Elsa Lanchester in MORE THAN A BRIDE: Elsa Lanchester and Her Bawdy/Droll/Cockney//Poignant Songs at Don't Tell Mama, on three Sundays at 4 pm: February 22, March 8 and March 22, 2026.

Remembered primarily for her iconic role as the Bride of Frankenstein and as the wife of Charles Laughton, Lanchester made a name for herself in London in the 1920s, singing at her own night spot, and then mesmerized L.A. audiences in the 1940s at the Turnabout Theatre as a self-styled diseuse, talk-singing witty, often bawdy character pieces written for her by Forman Brown, a lyricist, composer, puppeteer and novelist.

The program will include several of Forman Brown's songs that Lanchester released on a beloved set of LPs in the 1950s, as well as a Brown number that isn't on those albums, plus:

• two rarities she sang in movies;
• songs from Lanchester's London days, including music hall numbers that she helped revive and a hit that was written for her (“I've Danced with a Man, Who Danced with a Girl, Who Danced with the Prince of Wales”);
• a setting of one of Ariel's songs in The Tempest, which she sang in a production at the Old Vic that helped cement her reputation as a credible actress and ineffable personality; and
• a surprise premiere, based on a lyric Axelrod found in Lanchester's archive at the Motion Picture Academy library in Los Angeles.

John M. Cook not only serves as music director and pianist, but also appears as Laughton and a number of Lanchester's other creative partners. James Beaman directs.

Axelrod last performed at Don't Tell Mama in 2023, with My City, reflecting on her love of a vanishing, mythologized New York. She brought After the Bawl (Recovering from Heartbreak) – her MAC-nominated (for musical comedy) show – to Don't Tell Mama in 2019/2020. Axelrod has performed regularly in New York cabarets, with a long-time collaboration with the late Paul Trueblood and now with John M. Cook. She has sung at the U.S. State Department, in The Hague, Rotterdam, Normandy and Kyiv, at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, in El Paso and in the Berkshires. She presented her illustrated concert-lecture, The Lads That Will Never Be Old: Popular and Art Songs From and About World War One, to several universities and clubs.

Formerly a newspaper reporter and full-time marketing communications executive, Axelrod was awarded a Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowship for writing at Williams College and has a degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism. An Eastern regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, she used her singing and writing chops to create and perform a one-woman opera comedy show, Shishkebopera!, with pianist Paul Greenwood.

Andrea Axelrod and John M. Cook, at Don't Tell Mama (343 W. 46th St.), Sundays at 4 pm: February 22, March 8* and March 22, 2006 *clocks change