Review: Jenn Colella Celebrates Her BIG DYKE ENERGY at The Laurie Beechman Theatre

“I’ve never seen this many men at a Jenn Colella show before.”  That was me, to my tablemates at the Laurie Beechman Theatre on August 31st.  Heads were nodded in agreement.  

“Or children,” said another person at the table. 

It’s true.  At the past Jenn Colella shows I have been to, the audience members have leaned into three categories:  Broadway devotees, friends and family of La Colella, and lesbians who have come in support (and dedication) to one of their sisters.  This isn’t out of the ordinary - queer people are loyal fans of the artists who tell their stories and create representation.  Also, Broadway devotees tend toward loyalty for their favorites, and friends and family are often the only people who go to cabaret performers’ shows.  But when Jenn Colella’s new show BIG DYKE ENERGY opened last Sunday night, the fact that the sold-out Beechman Theatre was so fully populated by heterosexual males and young people (along with those three categories) was significantly important.  Here was a Tony Award-nominated actress, a sought-after teacher of theatrical storytelling, and a highly visible member of the LGBTQIA+ community, and her audience reach had gone beyond that usually found at her equally sold-out shows in other venues.  And why is that important?  Because representation matters.  Because every time queer people gather in a group or in a spotlight, it matters.  It matters because it is a moment of activism.  I thought we had reached a time in our lives when the act of just being visible was becoming less essential, but in these politically tenuous times, visibility has become more important than it has in a while.  As politicians, zealots, and attention-seekers strive to push the queer community down and strip us of our rights, we must double down on our insistence on being seen.  So, when Jenn Colella writes a musical cabaret titled BIG DYKE ENERGY about her life as a woman who loves women, telling the stories of events that made her who she is, and when young people are exposed to the glory and the beauty of that story, it is an important piece of storytelling, a valuable moment of representation, and a bold force of activism.

It’s also really good entertainment.

While Ms. Colella is more often jamming to rock music, dancing to disco, and belting out Broadway, Big Dyke Energy is a show built around a more laid-back set list.  It’s rock and roll, it’s country, it’s rockabilly, it’s folksy, it’s crunchy… it’s a set list that works for her theme, particularly since it’s music by strong female artists like Norah Jones, Sara Bareilles, and Amy Winehouse, and music by queer artists like Melissa Etheridge, Fiona Apple, Ani DiFranco, and Brandi Carlile. And even when La Colella goes with the guys, her choices have purpose; they have intention, like applying Billy Joel’s “She’s Always A Woman” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” to her own life, as any good cabaret storyteller would, should, or could.  Indeed, Colella’s take on the Cohen number is the first time this writer has ever enjoyed the song; that’s how brilliant is the woman’s skill at both storytelling and singing.   The BIG DYKE setlist isn’t only authentic to the themes of the musical cabaret, it’s authentic to Jenn Colella, as could be guessed by anyone who has attended one of her previous shows, and anyone who knows her.  And even though it’s a safe bet that a cabaret audience is made up of friends and family, Jenn Colella’s crowd should be populated with strangers, with people who have never met her in real life, because this is a storyteller, a performer, an entertainer to go see just because you like to be entertained.  They say that your friends aren’t your customers.  Jenn’s customers should be everyone, friend or friend you haven’t met yet.   People should go see her to be entertained and to have a shaft of illumination cast into their corner of the world.

For her seventy-minute show, Jenn has woven, seamlessly, the journey that brought her to the blissful moment in which she lives, as dedicated wife to Mo Mullen, and devoted mother to Morrison.  In this, Jenn Colella’s most intimate and open show to date, there are stories about youthful explorations in making out, there are tales of heartbreak at the hands of heterosexual explorers, and there are laughs galore that won’t be spoiled in this review (you’ll have to see the show to get those).  Suffice it to say that this gay boy saw his own journey reflected in Jenn’s storytelling in ways so parallel that the law of averages weighs heavily on many people finding resonance in the recountings of Broadway’s favorite lesbian.  The tales are hers, but the themes are everyone’s - especially anyone over the age of thirteen.  There is great universality in the stories, a strong sign that we humans are much more alike than some would have us think, whatever our differences may be.  There is solidarity in the storytelling.

There is also impeccable musical proficiency.  Whether growling on opening number “Come To My Window” or employing a twangy belt to Hands On a Hardbody’s “Burn That Bridge,” whether showcasing the intersection where acting meets vocal technique on evening highlight, Sara Bareilles’s “Gravity,” or bringing the fun of live performance to the Winehouse classic “Valerie” (another highlight), Jenn Colella aces every single number, honoring not only the original artists but her own uniqueness.   Musical Director Chris Ranney has provided Jenn with arrangements that suit her like a Broadway costume fitted precisely to her, arrangements that provide ample opportunity for on-stage dancing and leaps into the air, as well as moments to spotlight the words and the notes put down on paper by the authors, whose intent is never dismissed but, instead, melded with the personal story being shared.  There is such purity to the sounds she makes, and Ranney (and drummer Emma Ford) lift those sounds up in the air, like one of those Colella leaps.   The soprano sounds are SO high!  On a POP SONG!  And then, like a skier on a black diamond slope, Colella slides down to warm whiskey low notes that carry the story to the deepest place in your heart.  It’s eye-opening, and a little jaw-dropping, too.   But this is what we have come to expect of Jenn Colella, a woman and an entertainer who doesn’t do half-way - not in her shows, not in her life, and certainly not in her loves, of which concerts like this is one.  It is always a treat to see her in action, but there’s something different, something special, in BIG DYKE ENERGY (the Cohen number and DiFranco’s “Untouchable Face” are, alone, worth the ticket price), where audience members get a chance to hear, from the lesbian’s mouth, and in that inimitable Colella style, who she is, what she is about, and how she lives.   It’s genuine, it’s theatrical, and it’s honest.

And THAT’s cabaret.

Jenn Colella will play BIG DYKE ENERGY on October 9th at 7 pm.  Ticket info HERE.

The Westbank Cafe website is HERE.

Jenn Colella is on Instagram HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher