Review: BROADWAY ORIGINALS Brings Memories & Talent to 54 Below

Perhaps there are favorite performances from your favorite Broadway cast albums that have only been audio experiences you played over and over in your bedroom. Imagine them bursting into visual life on a nightclub stage, recreated by that same star, years later. That happens in the series called Broadway Originals. Maybe you have fond memories of musical highlights of a certain show and a certain song as done by the actor who created the role when the show was new or in a revival. Want the indelible experience itself revived? That happens in the series called Broadway Originals. Or it could be that you were too young to have attended a certain production or heard the cast album, but you’ve heard ABOUT them and wondered what all the hooplah and raves were about, and think it might be about time for a belated grateful discovery. That happens in the series called Broadway Originals, too. History repeats itself and so do the appreciative cheers in these programs that host/producer Scott Siegel has been putting together at 54 Below and has done for years at other venues, too. The recent installment on June 13 was a satisfying one to bask in nostalgia or just to hear some splendid theatre songs by seasoned performers. 

Time melted away over and over during the night. Karen Akers shared stories of auditioning the role of the protagonist’s wife in Nine many years ago (about Nine times five years ago!!), securing the role and working with director Tommy Tune. She has often been called on to revisit the musical material written by Maury Yeston from this signature role in presentations of this kind, and her rendition of  “My Husband Makes Movies” always sounds fresh and focused. Her clear spoken set-up and spoken lines from the script give valuable context for this and her other selection from the score, “Be on Your Own.” These remain dignified but deeply emotional. An audience is advised to bring tissues. Appearing on Broadway in the same year was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – the popular show that began in the late 1960s as a very brief pop cantata for a school production and expanded into a full-length score for a record album. The man who first donned that titular multi-hued garment came to the stage to revitalize and recall two big numbers from the famous Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice score: “Any Dream Will Do” was potent. An anecdote about the problem of the mammoth pyramids built for the Egypt set not fitting through the theatre door brought an ironic new meaning to the other selection from the musical: “Close Every Door.”    

At the age of 21, Pamela Winslow Kashani became the original Rapunzel in Into the Woods and also understudied the roles of Cinderella and her stepsisters. Recalling the golden, early opportunity, she called it “my personal fairy tale.” Two selections from the Stephen Sondheim score brought enthusiastic audience response; she warmed hearts with the tender “No One Is Alone” and also performed a tour de force by singing BOTH parts in a duet written for daughter Rapunzel and her overprotective witch mother, “Our Little World.” 

Martin Vidnovic favored the audience with tales of his career, advice he was given about pointing as a meaningful gesture) and recalled different projects: originating a role in the musical Baby, the revival of the classic Lerner & Loewe Brigadoon (represented by his “Almost Like Being in Love”) and A Grand Night for Singing, the nightclub revue of Rodgers & Hammerstein material that moved to Broadway, prompting the dramatic, wistful “This Nearly Was Mine.” It brought special smiles and memories to that revue’s producer, Scott Perrin, who was at my table.  Well, the whole evening was a grand night for singing indeed, a grand night for learning bits of history from Mr. Siegel. 

If the mission and memo was to stir memories of how songs were done back in the day — as far as tone, tempo and musical “temperature” — then more familiar musical comfort food was on the menu. Keeping the key elements via the keyboard-only accompaniment, hewing closely to Broadway arrangements in piano reductions, it was, I suppose, mission accomplished with the conservative, diligent, dutiful piano accompaniment provided by Michael Lavine, eschewing inventive personalizations and new nuances that can be exciting in other cabaret agendas when singers are NOT performing as characters. Alex Rybeck, the accomplished go-to musical director choice for Karen Akers, took over for her numbers with his usual flair. 

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