Ricky Pope - Page 4

At its heart, MELISSA ERRICO SINGS HER NEW YORK is not a show about New York, or songs about New York, although both of those things are prominently featured. Rather it is about one woman's lifelong experience of New York City, with all of the dreams, obsessions, joys, heartbreaks, terror, and rapture that come with living, working, and loving in the world's most exciting and most irritating city. It is about a woman who made the short journey from Long Island with nothing but some dance shoes, a voice, and a dream and acquired a home, friends, a career, a husband, and a family, along with a journal full of memories and experiences. In short, a life.

Today we kick off the series with my conversation with musical director, Tracy Stark. She is one of the most prolific musical directors on the NY scene, playing upwards of 75-100 shows a year. She is the winner of 11 MAC awards in addition to the Bistro award and the Dottie Burman Songwriter of the Year award. She has worked with a plethora of great artists including Lesley Gore, Sarah Dash, Phoebe Snow, Karen Black, Randy Jones, Jimmy Osmond, Tovah Feldshuh, Eric Millegan. Tonya Pinkins, Ann Crumb, Marni Nixon, and hundreds of other rock, jazz, and Broadway artists. In the past 6 months, I have seen shows she worked on with Alice Ripley, Kim David Smith, and Meg Flather.

The room at 54 Below tonight was rocking with the beats of many genres of music blended together into an evening of joy and gratitude. The show was billed as AN EVENING WITH SERGE CLIVIO AND FRIENDS VOL. 2. There is truth in advertising. There were many friends who graced the stage with Clivio. This is the fourth time Serge has appeared at 54 Below including his previous Vol. 1 show which included some of the same friends gathered from his time at school and from the start-up company where he works. But tonight was a special night. After an especially challenging year, the singer was donating all the proceeds of tonight’s show to Memorial Sloan Kettering. And even though Clivio said he didn’t want the show to be about that (and it wasn’t,) the fact that they were speaks volumes about the heart and soul of this young and talented performer.

Barbara Bleier and Austin Pendleton are at it again. But to be honest, even during the pandemic they were never gone. They created a show that Pangea streamed for virtual audiences. Tonight that show LIFE, AND LOVE, AND WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE?  had its debut in front of a live audience in the back room of Pangea. Bleier explained to us that when they were putting the show together two years ago, they intended to write a show with a political theme. But in these extraordinary times, they have discovered that really everything is political. Everything. And that’s the show they have put together: an evening about the politics of patriotism, the politics of career, the politics of aging, the politics of men and women, the politics of marriage, the politics of family, and the politics of falling in love. It is, in fact, a show about everything.

Angela Bacari is 78 years young. But nothing in either her appearance of performance belies that fact. The woman has pipes and she knows how to use them. She is a jazz stylist who can rank with some of the greats. She can belt to the rafters but is also capable of very tender passages. She has an amazingly supple technique, which explains why she is so in demand as a vocal coach to the stars, counting Liza Minelli, Marisa Berenson, Deana Martin, and Billy Gilman among her protegés. She has appeared on The Merv Griffin Show, and The Dinah Shore Show as well as opening for Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Bill Cosby, and Pat Cooper. But last night, she was the headliner and the crowd went wild for her. It was been nearly 40 years since Ms. Bacari has made an appearance on the NY stage and it is highly overdue.

Rian Keating is a masterful storyteller. His stories are filled with humanity. And even though his tales are very personal and specific, they remind us all that at the heart of things, we are all struggling with the same emotions and challenges. We are all looking for our place in the world while dealing with challenges and joys and heartbreaks. This is the focus of his new show TIME STAMPS: FRAGMENTS OF A LIFE IN STORY AND SONG which opened last night at Don’t Tell Mama. You may remember Rian Keating from the early days of NY cable access when he interviewed some of the biggest theatre celebrities on his show SPOTLIGHT.  Or you may have seen one of his many shows at Don’t Tell Mama where he shared his stories and songs. Rian has spent many years in education, as a teacher and on the board of education. This show, like all of his theatrical endeavors, was a fundraiser for the GOLDEN DOOR SCHOLARSHIP, an endowment dedicated to undocumented students who do not otherwise have funds available for higher education. Keating is a special person, indeed.

Justin Vivian Bond brought vself new show STORMING THE GLAMPARTS to Joe's Pub inside the beautiful Public Theatre this week. I was lucky enough to catch Thursday night's performance and was dazzled by the brilliance of Bond's talent, brains, and beauty. V is a true one-of-a-kind entertainer. V is outrageous while being grounded in very traditional entertainment forms. V presents vself as a chanteuse with a good deal of diva energy. V arrangements by musical director, Matt Ray are all firmly rooted in the cabaret vernacular. But Justin Vivian Bond goes to a level beyond simply cabaret. V show is a good-natured exposé of everything that's important in 2021. And even though Bond claims to rate low on the empathy scale, v show is the perfect picture of inclusion, empathy, and love.

I took a second look at OLD SOULS. I’m glad I went. I would say about 80% of the show was the same as it was at Don’t Tell Mama. But with new songs, the new configuration of the band, and being in a room that is designed for rock and roll, OLD SOULS  was a very different experience. Everything about the show was tighter, more in the groove, more amped up, and a more authentic representation of Chinnock & Harris. The two men have different approaches to classic rock. Jared Chinnock is a more bombastic performer whereas Evan Buckley Harris is more laid back. In their Don’t Tell Mama show, the difference in their styles was obvious in some discrepancies in phrasing. In this new incarnation of the show, they seem to have met each other in the middle. Chinnock has found a more lyrical quality in his stratospheric tenor and Harris has found places to let loose and wail. They have found their voice as a group.

Eleri Ward's concert tonight at Rockwood Music Hall served as an album release of sorts. She performed selections from her new album A PERFECT LITTLE DEATH for a very appreciative audience comprised of both Sondheim fans and fans of indie music alike. If you weren’t a fan of Eleri Ward coming in, it’s unlikely that you left without being captivated by her. Her voice is crystalline pure, inhabiting the same effortless soprano world as Judy Collins before her. Her arrangements are rhapsodic and filled with yearning. She was visibly moved to be performing in front of a live audience again. Her performance was intimate and vulnerable and touching.

Maria Corsaro has teamed up with the wonderful Sue Matsuki, who in her directing debut has fashioned a tight and clever new show that showcases Maria Corsaro’s dark, rich voice in a series of songs that started life as jazz instrumentals and had lyrics added to them later, sometimes decades later. The show, YOU TAUGHT MY HEART TO SING, had its premiere last Saturday at Pangea. I was lucky enough to be in the audience. Corsaro has a lovely voice and chose a very ambitious set of tunes that for the most part show her off to great advantage. Besides being a fine jazz artist, Corsaro is a woman with a very big heart that she loves to share with her audience.

Marcus Simeone is a singer of great range and much soul. He is fearless in going to very intimate, emotional places. He is also a born storyteller, creating vivid images with only a few words. Sean Harkness plays guitar like he made a deal with the devil. His fingers do things that should be impossible. He plays every inch of the instrument, not only the strings but the fingerboard, the frets, the bridge and he even uses the body of the guitar as percussion. The partnership between these two artists is so simpatico, it feels like one mind.

Kelli O'Hara has one of the most beautiful voices on Broadway today, probably ever. Her musicianship is unparalleled. She is a great actress without being fussy about it. For all her star power, she still seems like the girl next door. She brings a typhoon of passion to everything she does, inviting her audience to share in that deep well of emotion. You leave any performance by Kelli O’Hara feeling more hopeful, more alive, more human.

A gentle wish for peace and an acknowledgment of the beauty all around us. Those were the last words to flow out of the pen of Oscar Hammerstein II. Born into a legendary theatrical family, his career spanned over 40 years on Broadway and he worked with a myriad of partners, notably Sigmund Romberg and Jerome Kern. But it is his groundbreaking partnership with Richard Rodgers that produced the work he will forever be remembered for. The partnership won him 8 Tony awards and two Oscars for best song. A playwright and lyricist, he created 5 works that are still staples of regional and community theatres around the world and 4 lesser performed works that pushed boundaries and are the basis of the musical play that still is a model for modern theatre writers. In terms of theatrical giants, they don't come much bigger than Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Broadway dreams die hard. In her new show THIS BROAD’S WAY,  which opened last evening at Pangea, she gets to sing all the Broadway tunes she ever wanted to sing, perform all the roles she would never be cast in, and do it all her own way. The songs are completely out of context and applied to her own experiences. She infuses each tune with her own wry wit and her lovely and warm jazz stylings. She is one part chanteuse, one part monologuist, one part den mother, and one part suggestive vixen. And she is 100 percent fun. Her show is a treasure trove of swinging tunes and she has gathered a smoking trio of musicians in drummer, David Silliman, bassists Skip Ward and her longtime partner in art, musical director Gregory Toroian.

Christine Andreas' show, AND SO IT GOES, which opened at 54 Below last evening, doesn’t contain even a whiff of politics. But it focuses on the disjointedness the past decade or so has created in all our souls and holds up art and music as a way out of some of the chaotic noise that is making us lesser humans. It is a celebration of our collective humanity and an embrace of some of our best qualities as a species: kindness, tenderness, compassion, and love. That’s a lot to pack into a 70 minute cabaret evening. But Christine Andreas is no ordinary cabaret performer. In addition to her prodigious gifts as a singer and actress, she has always used her keen mind to focus on the bigger questions. She set out constructing this show as a way to cheer herself up. But what evolved is much more. It is a journey into the darkness and out again.

Tony Yazbeck's self-titled show is a celebration of motion. And make no mistake, dance is Tony Yazbeck’s native language. His entire demeanor alters when he begins to tap. His face lights up and his entire being exudes joy. If reincarnation exists, I want to come back with the ability to move as gracefully as Tony Yazbeck.

Haley Swindal (Chicago, Jekyll & Hyde, White Christmas) is a performer in the old sense, the kind who would have been right at home in the age of television variety shows. Her engaging personality is big, but not intimidating. She commands attention without being consciously flashy about it. She has what used to be called in the old days “stage presence.” Before the pandemic, she impressed Broadway audiences as one of the youngest women to play Matron Mama Morton in Chicago. She definitely has some of the swagger and chutzpah of that “Countess of the Clink.” But underneath it lies a sensitive, nurturing, sexy woman who is completely comfortable downstage center. In short, Haley Swindal is the life of the party.

There are some people who just have a passion for living. Passion is a word that applies to everything Christine Andreas touches. She has been bewitching Broadway audiences since she first appeared as the wicked maid Nancy in Angel Street. Her turns in much-heralded revivals of My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, and On Your Toes made her Broadway's ingenue of choice and earned her two Tony nominations. She also wowed Broadway audiences in The Scarlet Pimpernel and the 2010 revival of La Cage aux Folles. She conquered the West End in The Fields of Ambrosia, written by her husband and collaborator, Martin Sylvestri.

The joy and terror of doing cabaret entertainment is that it is amazingly confessional. There are no characters to hide behind. Only music, a performer, and his experiences. The vulnerability is exponentially compounded when the show you set out to do tells the story of your life. It is an extremely courageous thing to do. That is the task that Mark Corpron sets for himself in his show MOVING ON: SONGS OF JOURNEY, which opened last night at Don’t Tell Mama. The show sets out to explore not the destinations we arrive at in life, but rather the journeys that happen in between those destinations. It focuses on a soul with a permanent case of wanderlust and the loneliness that often accompanies such globe-trotting adventures.

Andy and Orfeh have been making music together for 20 years. And from Saturday Night Fever to Legally Blonde to Pretty Woman and several other shows they co-starred in, they have reigned as Broadway’s hippest married couple. It’s pretty unfair for two people to be so attractive, so talented, so charismatic, so successful, and so in love. Yet it’s impossible to resent their many gifts because they are so willing to share them and they make it all look like such great fun.