Review: TRACIE THOMS Burns Down The Basement At Return To 54 Below

Last night, during her return to 54 Below after what is two years shy of a decade, Tracie Thoms took a brief break in the action by welcoming to the stage her longtime soulmate of a bff, Wilson Jermaine Heredia.  As the star of 9-1-1 stepped off the stage and settled in at a table house right, Mr. Heredia remarked on the proceedings, thus far, by saying he thought he was at a Chaka Khan concert.  The Tony Award winner was not wrong.  There were elements during the concert performance of every great diva you can think of.  It might have been a Chaka Khan show.  It could’ve been a Patti LaBelle concert.  There were moments when this writer was reminded of the R&B divas upon whose music his teeth were cut, from Roberta Flack to Lisa Fischer, from Miss Gladys Knight to my personal favorite, Deborah Cox.  The thing is - it wasn’t Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Misses Flack, Fischer, Knight, or Cox: this was Tracie Thoms.  Now, I knew Tracie Thoms could sing.  I’ve seen her on Broadway, doing the musical theater thing.  But I didn’t know, I had no idea that this was the level of diva-dom that the woman who is usually an actress playing a character possesses in her own reality.  Speaking personally, our house is a Tracie Thoms house - my family sees all the plays, the movies, and every episode of 9-1-1.  But the fierce Lady who played Broadway’s Living Room last night was a surprise, completely and totally, to me.  I did not get to see her previous cabaret concerts, and thank goodness I have been put into the light because I can, now, happily, tell all our BroadwayWorld Cabaret readers to get a ticket to tonight’s performance (in person HERE and on Livestream HERE) because this is the show to see this summer.  As my nephew once observed, “Hody Mody” (at six, he could not say Holy Moly).  And, as I feel compelled to observe from my own seat:  eight years is too long to be without this kind of blazing talent.  I know that when an actor gets a hit TV show, they have to ride that pony for as long as they can, but this diva should be unleashed on the cabaret and concert industry at least every couple of years.  New York City and the cabaret art form need Tracie Thoms.  And how.

For her 2025 musical cabaret, Tracie Thoms explained last night, she and her band (what a band, too) have freshened up a concert she created some years ago, a concert of love songs for which she was advised, by Billy Porter, to choose her 100 favorite love songs and whittle it down.  The fourteen songs (two of them mashed-up marvelously into a bang-on opening number) have been made the framework of a cabaret show with an arc, one that discusses various aspects of love, falling in love, being in love, working in the name of love, walking away in spite of love, and all of the seasons of love (yes, I went there).  The arc of the program is a solid one - Ms. Thoms knows how to craft a concert.  The script for the story is an entertaining one, and I am positive there is a script, even though every word, every sentence, every thought, and every idea expressed by Ms. Thoms sounds as extemporaneous as though being born in real time during an honest conversation (and a funny one, too).  This is stage storytelling of the highest quality, easy to listen to, desirable of being heard, touching and full of pathos, and as funny as a rubber crutch on a banana peel.  Tracie Thoms had her audience, as the saying goes, in the palm of her hand, and nobody wanted to be let go.  She is charming and delightful, and (when necessary) refreshingly frank (this writer hopes tonight’s audience will be treated to some of her more, shall we say, unfiltered opinions, as we were last night).  Tracie Thoms should be named among the great concert talents and the greatest voices.

And on the topic of the vocal performance last night.  The singing was UN REAL.  It seems rude to be so surprised but, at the risk of rudeness, hearing Tracie Thoms sing last night was shocking.  Maybe what makes it shocking is the surprise that this voice, this talent, this skill exists, and the entire world doesn’t know about it.  Of course, John Lloyd Young once remarked to me (and this is a direct quote), “You have to ride the train that wants to take you,” and it would appear that it is the Acting Train upon which sits the Thoms trajectory.  But if a person (ok, this person) were to believe in god, a person would be praying for more and more of this side of Tracie Thoms.  It seems practically impossible to pick highlights from the concert, so I’m going to go with the moments in the show that really raised my heart rate.   The previously mentioned opener “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair/Let’s Stay Together” quickened my pulse just out of pure pleasure.  A powerful “Ordinary People” took the crowd into the arc, follow-up story “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know” told the audience that there would be acting along with the singing (and we’ve all seen the shows where the acting was left at home in favor of mere vocals), and then came a kind of a storytelling climb to the summit.  An astonishingly arranged “I Can’t Make You Love Me” was followed by a mind-blowing “I Keep Forgettin” (the song choices are SO choice), after which there was some Donny Hathaway, some Liza Minnelli, some Stevie Wonder, and even a little Rent.  No, my friends, there is no naming of highlights to be had.  This program, from entrance to exit, is one of THE highlights of the 2025 cabaret season of New York, only made better by the presence of the two former stars of Rent being reunited.  The duets between Thoms and Heredia are fun and they are fabulous, especially given the reminiscences to which Tracie treats the crowd, a crowd that was thrilled to be invited to join in on the encore.  You know what song it is.  And if you’re attending tonight’s 7 pm performance, warm up your vocal cords by listening to Rent today and singing along around the house.  Tracie Thoms encourages singing at her show (“I have no ego about that”), and a room full of happy, elated, excited people singing “Seasons Of Love” is enough to send anybody home on a high - be sure to look around the room at the rest of the crowd, revel in the joy that is so palpable.  So, readers, if you ever trusted me before or you never trusted me before, please trust me now:  don’t miss this one.  This is a show for the record books, a show to remember, and, please, please, please, a show to bring back to 54 Below on a regular basis.   #bighint, Tracie Thoms.

HERE is the link for tonight’s show in person;  THIS is the link for the livestream, and the 54 Below homepage is THIS ONE.

Follow Tracie Thoms on Instagram HERE.

The aforemention amazing band is made up of Jakubu Griffin on Drums, Steve Count on Bass, and Musical Director/arranger James Sampliner conducting from the Piano.

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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