Review: Elvira Tortora Makes Welcome Debut With THE BOOKMAKER'S DAUGHTER at Don't Tell Mama

It’s a complicated thing, creating your debut cabaret show.  Will you just sing a set of songs, songs without connection or relation?  Will you choose a composer and do a tribute show?  Or maybe you want to pick a theme and do a specific kind of vibe?  Or do you do the most vulnerable (and, yet, the most easy) thing - a memoir play?  It’s your first time out - what will you make your artistic voice?  How will  you announce yourself?

For Elvira Tortora, the answer seems to have been the most natural of choices: stay close to home.

After spending  a little time studying the art of cabaret (with the instructor who would become her director, Lina Koutrakos), this one-time musical theater actress decided the time had some to fly solo.  So she surveyed the lay of the land, weighed all her options, and chose to do a show about her life as the daughter of a bookie.  Yeah, that’s right.  And what the cabaret-going public got was THE BOOKMAKER’S DAUGHTER, one of the most original, authentic, and real stories being told on the cabaret stage today.  And chances are that if you compared it to some of the cabaret shows that were told in some other seasons, it would still be the most original, authentic, and real stories to tell.  Let’s be honest: when you are the daughter of a bookie and you are writing your first cabaret show, are you really going to consider anything else as the focus of your story?  Uh…. no.

Elvira Tortora’s musical cabaret is wonderfully written, with a fair amount of content but never so much as to become too long, and never so little as to become stingy.  With her natural storytelling skills (it seems, at times, too natural to be informed by any formal acting training), Ms. Tortora is able to communicate hilarious stories about her life, her family’s life, and her parents’ life (and, to be sure, there is a difference between all three).  She has crafted a script that works in chapters mostly chronological (there may be a tangential moment here or there), in order to give the full experience that she had in her own lifetime.  And with her not-very-economical script that also avoids the verbose, she illustrates a rich history through imagery, humor, pathos, and great timing, comic or otherwise.  This is a good storyteller, so good that if this is her cabaret debut, there is reason for optimism regarding future outings.

Weaving her stories in and out of famous songs by composers of varied interests, Ms. Tortora displays a lovely soprano singing voice that would have served her well in musical theater, but life had other plans for her.  No matter… she is here now and the people are coming.  Boy, are they coming.  Her first outing with this show sold almost overnight.  An extension became necessary.  Then another.  Then another.  It looks like THE BOOKMAKER’S DAUGHTER is the show to see this season.  And Tortora’s got the goods, using that lovely soprano on musical theater songs like “Now I Have Everything” from FIDDLER or “Raining” from ROCKY or evening highlight “With So Little To Be Sure Of” from ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, but there are also popular tunes originally made famous by Robert Goulet, Bobby Vinton and Luther Vandross, which demonstrate some versatility (the Vandross number was quite special).  For most of the music, though, Elvira did lean into the Broadway canon, and it gave someone else a chance to shine - Musical Director Gregory Toroian, he of the complex and impressive jazz arrangements for artists like Sue Matsuki and Kati Neiheisel.  The nature of Elvira’s show required a few straightforward musical theater arrangements, in order for the storytelling to remain sincere rather than showy, and Mr. Toroian pulled back beautifully on these simpler, unassuming numbers, saving himself (and a little surprise styling action for Tortora) for numbers like “Luck Be A Lady,” where an intricate jazz treatment best serves the story arc.  These reserved arrangements gave the audience an opportunity to see another side of the jazz proficient, and it's a good looking side.  All of the BOOKMAKER arrangements, jazz or otherwise, are just lovely.  The Tortora/Toroian pairing is right and proper, sophisticated yet down-to-earth - a foreshadowing of great things to come.  May the twosome live on in many future shows, for they are good together.

The outing is a fine first cabaret show and the promise that had been seen earlier in Tortora’s career in the classroom is paying off - it will be remembered as one of the debut outings of the season.  If this writer might offer one small observation: there comes a point in Ms. Tortora’s story when the subject of money made comes up… more than once.  There is a purpose to the subject, and it is to illustrate how independent she had become in her post-parents, post-husband life.  One might observe that it can be difficult for some audience members to listen to the tawdry topic of coin discussed with such firm rhetoric.  To hear a person speak so freely of how much money they have, the number of homes they have, can become a turn-off.   Elvira Tortora is too likable, too relatable, too enjoyable a person and performer to run the risk of alienating any member of her audience in this way.  Perhaps a slight softening of the subject might serve her story, perhaps give it a vague, abstract feel on the topic of financial success, in order to avoid the boastful.  It is a minor quibble but one intended to preserve Elvira Tortora’s relationship with her audience, one that can only grow through continued performances because, clearly, THE BOOKMAKER’S DAUGHTER is the show everyone wants to see and it would appear that Elvira Tortora is the new cabaret star on the scene - Miss Cabaret 2023.  And, frankly speaking, she and her show have earned it. 

The Bookmaker's Daughter plays a final performance (for now) on November 5th (TODAY) at three pm  - get a ticket HERE.

Find more shows to see on the Don't Tell Mama website HERE.

Find Elvira Tortora on Instagram HERE

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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